The Race To Redesign Sugar (newyorker.com) 142
Forget artificial sweeteners. Researchers are now developing new forms of real sugar, to deliver sweetness with fewer calories. But tricking our biology is no easy feat. From a report: Until the late eighteenth century, when sugar production started to become mechanized, most people consumed very little of what nutritionists call "free" or "added" sugars -- sweeteners other than, say, the lactose naturally present in milk and the fructose naturally present in fruit. In 1800, an average American would have lived and died never having encountered a single manufactured candy, let alone the array of sugar-sweetened yogurts, snacks, sauces, dressings, cereals, and drinks that now line supermarket shelves. Today, that average American ingests more than nineteen teaspoons of added sugar every day. Not only does most of that never come into contact with our taste buds; our sweet receptors are also less effective than those for other tastes. Our tongues can detect bitterness at concentrations as low as a few parts per million, but, for a glass of water to taste sweet, we have to add nearly a teaspoon of sugar. DouxMatok's method of restructuring sugar crystals was invented by Baniel's father, Avraham, an industrial chemist. He patented the technique five years ago, when he was ninety-six; today, at the age of a hundred and one, he has finally retired. At one point during my visit, Eran sifted through a pile of his father's memorabilia -- black-and-white photographs, identification cards, university certificates -- to find illustrations for a forthcoming presentation about the company.
Many of the photographs were new to Eran, and, as he tried to place them, the outline of his father's life emerged: a six-year-old Polish boy sent to boarding school in what was then the British Palestine Mandate; a student at the University of Montpellier; a promising young scientist, strikingly handsome, exempted from serving in the British Army's Palestine Regiment so that he could make bombs in the basement of a paint factory near Haifa. [...] Estella Belfer, a pastry chef who is a judge on the TV show "Bake-Off Israel," hopes to use Incredo exclusively one day, but, recently, she told me about some of the challenges of cooking with it. "To make chocolate, it's easy. I just substitute the sugar with a smaller amount. In shortbread cookies, it is an improvement -- it makes them crispier," she said. "But in the cupcakes and the sponge cakes -- this is where there is an art to using Incredo sugar." Sugar is responsible for much of the tender, springy texture of a good cake; Incredo sugar behaves exactly the same way, but there's a lot less of it, which creates a problem. Belfer told me that she has successfully blended other ingredients, including soluble fibre and plant proteins, to restore the missing bulk and fluffiness -- "but it's not easy."
Many of the photographs were new to Eran, and, as he tried to place them, the outline of his father's life emerged: a six-year-old Polish boy sent to boarding school in what was then the British Palestine Mandate; a student at the University of Montpellier; a promising young scientist, strikingly handsome, exempted from serving in the British Army's Palestine Regiment so that he could make bombs in the basement of a paint factory near Haifa. [...] Estella Belfer, a pastry chef who is a judge on the TV show "Bake-Off Israel," hopes to use Incredo exclusively one day, but, recently, she told me about some of the challenges of cooking with it. "To make chocolate, it's easy. I just substitute the sugar with a smaller amount. In shortbread cookies, it is an improvement -- it makes them crispier," she said. "But in the cupcakes and the sponge cakes -- this is where there is an art to using Incredo sugar." Sugar is responsible for much of the tender, springy texture of a good cake; Incredo sugar behaves exactly the same way, but there's a lot less of it, which creates a problem. Belfer told me that she has successfully blended other ingredients, including soluble fibre and plant proteins, to restore the missing bulk and fluffiness -- "but it's not easy."
Sugar is not the flavor - it covers lack of flavor (Score:4, Informative)
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You're right. Sweet is a flavour and it comes mostly from sugars.
Claiming that sugar covers up lack of flavour just shows how little you know about cooking. Sugar can be an overpowering flavour, or it can be used to cut an undesirable one. I mean if you like Bolognese tasting like ascorbic acid then by all means don't add any sugars to it. If that's the kind of flavour you're into who am I to judge.
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Also they sometimes use carrots to impart a bit of sweetness.
Yep. Sugar. Sure natural sugar, but none the less sugar. That's the stupid part about people who try to cut sugar completely out of their diet. No banana for you.
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If you use decent tomatoes and you prepare the sauce correctly, the acidity goes away without adding sugar.
It has nothing to do with "decent", it has to do with pasturisation, something that happens with all condensed purees. I mean sure you could make a bolognese completely from scratch, but some of us have jobs and can't spend all day just preparing the fresh tomato concentrate.
So you cut it with sugar. Just like you cut the acidity of anything with sugar, be they natural or artificial.
Re: FTFY (Score:2)
Nadir's sig should read:
You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig.
You dig.
(The Man with No Name to Tuco the outlaw in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly ... )
Re:Sugar is not the flavor - it covers lack of fla (Score:4, Insightful)
Sugar is like salt, it is a flavor enhancer. So it's not that it covers a lack of flavor, it makes other flavors pop. All the basic tastes work like that: salt, sugar, bitter, sour and umami all enhance the perception of flavors that are detected by the nose. But you really don't need much of any of them to get the boost.
Thinking about it, I'd have to say that an overabundance of sugar is just what you describe, it covers a lack of flavor. But used sparingly, it can really boost other flavors. Of course, so can a little acid or salt, and people spend hours cooking, browning and developing umami flavors just for that boost. Bitter is a bit trickier just because it takes so very little, but that's what most herbs provide besides their aromatic volatiles, a little kick of bitter to enhance the other flavors in the dish.
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The way I think of it the six 'tastes' operate in kind of a six dimensional space. Think sliders on a mixing board, rather than the 3-space coordinate system used by L*a*b for color.
Similar to music, a dish may have all six simultaneously, and each harmonizes or is discordant against the others.
Accordingly, there are ways to 'trick' a taste. For example, bakers add some salt to sweet recipes as a little bit of salt will make the disk sweeter than the amount of sugar. It's not much around 1/4 t for a stan
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Indeed. The trick is that you do not need a lot. Real sugar is not a problem is used sparingly. Salt is not a problem if using sparingly. Fat is not either. But then you look, for example, at some industrial baked goods, and you find they have more sugar than flour in them!
Specifically for sugar, you can also train yourself off it. I did it when starting university (lots of coffee with lots of sugar to stay alert in lectures) and realized after 6 months I had a problem. Then I radically cut down on sugar. I
Re:Sugar is not the flavor - it covers lack of fla (Score:4, Informative)
Just like Salt. We have been increasing the dosage of sugar in our foods, so we expect it, and we will not buy products that don't have enough of it.
This is part of the Low Fat Craze during the 1980's and 1990's Where diet companies were making food with less fat, and compensating its lack of flavor and texture with more Salt and Sugar. Even now if we were to add the Fat back in and crate it the old way, it will take a while for our pallets to adjust back to that type of food.
A lot of our traditional foods, have been coated in sugar, because it was a preservative, While some foods were brined with salt, other foods were candied with sugar. As it help make sure the food didn't spoil, as well aided in the dehydration of the food.
Many of our traditional meals for fall and winter holidays are pickled, fermented or candied for a reason. It is because during that time, Access to fresh fruits and veggies were impossible. So Thanksgiving, we have some of the Vegetables available but they are late season such as potatoes, and green peppers. Christmas we have a lot of candies, and Salted meats, as this is a feast that we need to use our reserves. As well Easter More Candies, and more salted meats, as the growing season is just beginning, and we are still working off our reserves.
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Pretty much this. Also people used to live shorter and did die from disease and accidents quite a bit more frequently and often had not enough to eat to get overweight anyways, so the effects of salt and sugar where generally not that visible. Life has gotten longer, safer and more comfortable, so they now become relevant.
40% sugar reduction ... (Score:2)
Not worth the bother. If you want a modified sugar sweetener just use sucralose.
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Depends on what it tastes like. Sucralose tastes feral, to say nothing of the fact that being of a fundamental different chemical property than sugar it doesn't form a usable substitute in some ingredients, e.g. Good luck getting home made ice-cream to freeze at the same temperature when sweetened with sucralose.
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Sucralose still tastes a lot better than other sweeteners, including Stevia. And Aspartame was banned in Europe but not in Canada or U.S.A., so what's up with that?
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Yeah, stevia is just weird. Drinks with it taste like some kind of weird tea blend to me. I actually prefer the bittery chemically taste of aspartame in all applications I've used it in. Maybe if you were trying to go for some weird tea/vegetable flavor, stevia would be nice.
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Aspartame was banned in Europe
When was this? Because it sure isn't now (the Pepsi Max I'm currently sipping here in Europe has aspartame in it), and I've never heard of it having been banned. All google found for me was a ban on all artificial sweeteners for bakery wares that are labeled for specific nutritional needs.
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When was this?
Looked it up to reply to the OP. It was banned by some european countries in the 80s. When the EU introduced a unified food safety policy it effectively became a permitted additive throughout the EU. So technical for as long as the EU has concerned itself with food safety it was allowed, but prior to that there were a few countries where it was banned.
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Sucralose still tastes a lot better than other sweeteners, including Stevia.
That I actually disagree with, but it's probably personal taste. I think a mix of stevia and erythritol is the best tasting sugar alternative. Mind you it is even more useless than sucralose in any recipe which uses sugar to help bind to to set a freezing temperature, so don't bother with it for baking.
And Aspartame was banned in Europe but not in Canada or U.S.A., so what's up with that?
Don't believe everything you read on the internet. Aspartame was never banned "in Europe". It was banned by a couple of European countries or rather not authorised for use in the 80s, but that ban was overtur
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Sucralose is pretty good, but what I've found to be best is stevia+erithritol. Either one by itself is lousy, but together they are great. There are a few products on the market, or you can just buy both and use both. This combo has the lowest net carbs of any non-aspartame, non-saccharin sweetener, and tastes the most like sugar. And I've tried them all, baked with them, used them both hot and cold, etc.
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Or just do without. Takes a bit to get used to, but from my experience the change stays with you after that (30 years now in my case).
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Isn't that sucralose?
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Lies and lies (Score:3, Informative)
So many layers of lies, it is hard to keep it all straight.
Calories are measures of heat energy. All of these different sugars have about the same amount of heat energy. They're all "real" sugars, if something is a sugar or not is a chemical question, it is not a sourcing issue. Those superlatives would have to be added in a different way.
Many of the ones that chemically have calories, but are "considered" to not have calories nutritionally, are yet somehow not excreted from the body in a recognizable way at all, or are in an altered form. What sort of idiots are they if they think the body processed a sugar but they refuse to count the chemical energy in the sugar, because datasheet? That's not sciencey.
The reason they want to lie about the calories is that they really want to say "causes weight loss" on the package, but they're not allowed to, because it usually makes people who eat it fatter. So they lie about it from the side. Why are doctors this stupid? Oh, right, television.
Re:Lies and lies (Score:4)
Except for Erythritol I don't see the low intensity sweeteners marketed for being low calorie. The calories for high intensity sweeteners are obviously irrelevant.
Erythritol is mostly passed unchanged.
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As long as you are correcting yourself, you also probably wanted wean instead of ween.
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Perhaps, but ween (2) might also work.
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Erythritol is mostly passed unchanged
Many artificial sugars are. They are chemically alcohols. They have high "calories" but only because the measure of calorie is to do with setting it on fire and not to do with how it is absorbed by the body.
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Erythritol is mostly passed unchanged
Many artificial sugars are. They are chemically alcohols. They have high "calories" but only because the measure of calorie is to do with setting it on fire and not to do with how it is absorbed by the body.
Yes. Calorie content for nutrition are pure estimates. The original approach is indeed to burn the food in a caloriemeter and to measure the thermal energy created. Things have gotten somewhat more sophisticated by now, but it is still not an exact thing.
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Generally, people such as yourself believe that it passes through the system without being absorbed because the datasheet says so. And yet, lots have independent studies have had different results than that. And in most cases, it doesn't make logical sense. For example, some of the sugars are broken down in the stomach; surely those are absorbed. And lets face facts; if a sugar was not digestible in salivary amylase, you would not even know the food was sweet. So you could say, well, most of the sugar diges
Re:Lies and lies (Score:4, Interesting)
This isn't a pure chemistry question; it's a *culinary* question, and it can be phrased this way: how much sugar do you have to put into a food to achieve a certain effect?
Engineering sweeter sugars would allow you to accomplish the effect of tasting sweet with a smaller amount of sugar added. However sucrose has many other effects besides tasting sweet. It breaks down into glucose and fructose, which take part in the Maillard reaction which turns cooked things brown. Sucrose also plays a major role in creating the final texture of foods where it is used. No-sugar and low-sugar ice creams tend to have a gritty texture because sucrose in a normal recipe, because sucrose inhibits the growth of ice crystals.
The idea of an alternative sugar being used to reduce the amount of sugar in a recipe is not far fetched at all, but what's not clear to me is what the company is actually claiming to have accomplished. "Restructing the sugar crystal"? What does that even mean?
Still, something like a cupcake is an incredibly complex artifact; it's a lot more complicated than a chemical solution. A cake is a matrix of foams, solutions, and suspensions that is carefully constructed, step-by-step, then precisely desiccated. Differences in mechanical processes of assembling the batter can large effects -- for example combining ingredients in the wrong order, or mixing the final batter a bit too long -- can ruin the results. So it's not out of the question that a simple physical alteration in one key ingredient could produce a product that is dramatically different.
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They take porous silica nanobeads and load the pores with sugar. The result is that sugar hits receptors in a more concentrated dose and you get sweeter taste with less net sugar in solution. Their claim is that silica is anywhere between not bad and good for you. Of course, as usual, I would not rush out to try version 1.0 it could maybe work. However, the amount of marketing obfuscation behind such a simple product leads me to think this will be another evil concoction with side effects. Then again, I jus
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Thanks. That's interesting. I wouldn't worry about ingesting a few grams of silica per day. Breathing it -- that's a different story.
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The only risk is probably damaging your teeth mechanically, depending on particle shape, size and concentration. This stuff is essentially sand and passes the digestive system unchanged.
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Because surely no other part of your digestive system would be harmed by abrasives than your teeth!
Or is it just that that is the only part you can see, so you just don't worry about the other parts?
The entire act of digestion is abrasive. You need to compare the effect of silica with all the other things we eat, and I'm not surprised if the evidence says it's a wash.
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So it's not out of the question that a simple physical alteration in one key ingredient could produce a product that is dramatically different.
Agreed in general. My personal experience coming to America was that everything tastes too sweet, and even the recipes I download from recipe websites are too sweet. I routinely use 1/3 to 1/2 of the recommended sugar for things like cookies, sponge cakes, cupcakes, all kinds of baked goods, and the textures and moistness and "mouth feel" is neither harmed nor improved. I suspect that home recipes have a huge amount of tolerance for physical alteration of sugar. (I suspect that industrial recipes, less so).
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What sort of idiots are they if they think the body processed a sugar but they refuse to count the chemical energy in the sugar, because datasheet? That's not sciencey.
The body is known not to absorb alcohols in the same was as sugar. That is a verifiable fact. Most artificial sweeteners are some form of alcohol. How many calories a chemical has is nothing at all to do with how much energy is absorbed from it by the body, and that is sciency, even if the mechanism isn't perfectly understood.
Crappy editing... (Score:5, Informative)
The grabbed text jumps all over the place, from how our body handles sugar directly to DouxMatok's method (who the hell is that), then it talks about his father (why, I don't know) and introduces a baker (why is she relevant) and name drops Incredo (what the hell is that).
Whatever summary they were trying to make from TFA [newyorker.com] they really missed the mark.
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Re: Crappy editing... (Score:2)
It must work or writers wouldn't keep doing it, but I hate it. I really don't care about the irrelevant personal life story of some professor who studies mushrooms, I just want
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Article links are next to the title (Score:2)
Article links are next to the title, with the domain (in this case, newyorker.com) as the text in the hyperlink, and the URL as the link destination.
This is the wrong approach, among other things (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile even the summary touches on the point that I think is more important: people eat too much processed sugar these days. You want an obesity epidemic? That's how you get an obesity epidemic -- which is what we have today. Get the processed sugar out of everything. Get people to stop wanting it. Yes, yes, I know: getting people to stop wanting it will basically take a Magic Wand or a Genie granting Wishes that alter reality. But let's face it: all the processed sugars in everything are fucking us up. We don't need more 'artificial sweeteners' or 'modified sugar', we need people to stop wanting it all in the first place. Too bad that isn't going to happen.
Just be wary of this new 'modified sugar'. They'll spend millions developing and marketing it, knowing damned well there'll be a percentage of people who have weird side-effects from using it, but that'll be covered up, just like they did with aspartame and sucralose.
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Why did you pick sucralose as your example? It seems to be considered one of the safest artificial sweeteners. The ideal safest is left-handed sugar but it is expensive to produce, but I thought sucralose was a close second. It also has the benefit that is alluded to in the article, which is that is is far sweeter than sugar so you consume much less of it.
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Nobody really knows what the side effects of ingesting some of these substances really are, and we likely never will because there's too m
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I'm aware of the hypothesis that artificial sweeteners prime the body for sugar. But as far as I know there isn't really any evidence other than an epidemiological correlation between artificial sweetener consumption and increased body weight. That association could be caused by heavier people "watching calories".
Diet soda is an outlier -- a nutritionally empty food that taste's like it's packed with calories. But most artificially sweetened foods provide plenty calories, often calories that from a blood
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Re:This is the wrong approach, among other things (Score:5, Interesting)
So far every 'artificial sweetener' or 'modified sugar' (sucralose, I'm looking at you) they've come up with has health consequences attached to it that make it unacceptable -- which the vast majority of people don't even know about because it's covered up in some way or another. I see no reason why this attempt will be any different.
[...]
Just be wary of this new 'modified sugar'. They'll spend millions developing and marketing it, knowing damned well there'll be a percentage of people who have weird side-effects from using it, but that'll be covered up, just like they did with aspartame and sucralose.
No. The commonly-used artificial sweeteners have been studied for half a century, by researchers from hundreds of nations and organizations. Systematic reviews containing randomized controlled trials (often called RCTs or intervention studies) -- the creme de la creme [wikipedia.org] of scientific evidence -- consistently conclude that using artificial sweeteners are a safe replacement for sugar, are safe for diabetics, and their use leads to somewhere between no[1] and a modest[2][3] weigh loss.
You must also consider artificial sweeteners in comparison to what they're replacing. Any rare or small hypothetical side-effect of using artificial sweeteners that high-quality studies hasn't managed to uncover in 50 years is dwarfed in comparison to the known huge detrimental health effects that comes from consuming natural sugar.
[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
[2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
[3]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
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The size of the conspiracy necessary to pull something like that off makes it unreasonable over any length of time. Let's imagine that Coca Cola causes bladder cancer. Why haven't the Russian, French, or WHO researchers been spitting out research papers showing this for the past decades? The individual researchers would be world-renowned in their fields.
Don't tell me these governments that would love to see Americans get their comeuppance, and agencies that are under multi-national influence, are all someho
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No AC option today? I wanted to secretly say something snarky about progressives picking which science they like as much as conservatives do, but I guess I can't...
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You may define "good" as keeping people healthy and productive, fulfilling whatever roles and accomplishing whatever tasks you deem as "good" for them and their society. There is so much to be explored and discussed in evaluating these over-simplified notions. If you have a religion that provides answers and boundaries, then you are fortunate, and you can stop and just say it's good "because...". Otherwise, you are obligated to expand your perspective and examine the consistency of your beliefs.
For exa
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It's not just processed sugar. It's any and all *carbs* that are the problem.
Every carb of any kind is first reduced to a monosaccharide in the gut before being dumped into the bloodstream. Processed sugars get there quicker--but the rest all get there just the same. The body does an "oh shit" reaction and produces insulin to signal every mechanism available to reduce that "blood glucose" (which actually refers to any monosaccharide in the blood, not just glucose). This includes changing the metabolic regul
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If we just all went back to eating just meat we'd all be the healthier for it.
I was with you untll you busted out with that 'humans are carnivores' troll-meme.
Humans are OMNIVORES and we're healthiest when we eat an omnivorous diet.
HOWEVER people do eat too many carbohydrates because they're cheap and easy to get and tasty.
All I have to do is survey the honor-system snack bar here where I work to see that: mostly carbs, mostly EMPTY carbs, little in the way of protein, and what fat there is, is shitty fat.
When I was over 300 pounds, on my way down to sub-200 like I am now, one of
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Humans are OMNIVORES and we're healthiest when we eat an omnivorous diet.
But humans are NOT HEALTHY when all they eat is meat. I will not follow you on that one, not at all, because it's nonsense. Humans need a WIDELY VARIED diet from ALL food groups to be healthy and happy. You cannot convince me otherwise.
No, we are not omnivores, all caps doesn't make it "truer".
We are in fact facultative carnivores.
The only reason plant eaters need to eat a variety of things is because none of those things has all the required nutrients by itself... exactly the opposite of meat. Meat has 100% of all the nutrients we need, all in one place.
There are numerous studies, and a large, growing population of humans demonstrating as much--both ancestral/historical and current.
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Wrong again. Facultative carnivore is indeed the correct term. You can always look it up before attempting to correct my already correct grammar and responding with a weak, ad hominem retort.
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No, we are not omnivores, all caps doesn't make it "truer".
We are in fact facultative carnivores.
The only reason plant eaters need to eat a variety of things is because none of those things has all the required nutrients by itself... exactly the opposite of meat. Meat has 100% of all the nutrients we need, all in one place.
There are numerous studies, and a large, growing population of humans demonstrating as much--both ancestral/historical and current.
Nope. All those "studies" do not make that true. Humans are omnivores. Please have a look at the definition and stop claiming anti-science crap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Indeed. Humans are omnivores. And the huge success of agriculture is a nice indicator of that. The best nutritional advice I ever got was to vary what I eat, because there is a large range the body can compensate in and a mixed, variable diet is most likely to result in a good outcome. "Everything in moderation" is really the thing that works best.
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If we just all went back to eating just meat we'd all be the healthier for it.
And when do you think that was exactly? The last time a human ancestor was entirely carnivorous was around the time we split from the lemurs. But their meat intake consisted entirely of insects. For the last dozen million years of primate evolution, our path has been lined by vegetarians and omnivores.
We do not have the physiology to effectively digest plant matter--and besides being primarily carbs, most, if not all, plants are toxic to us in one form or another. (Plants are masters of chemical warfare, since they have no limbs to fight off predation they create both pesticides and planticides--several of which we know can cause us numerous issues.)
Plants are poisonous in order to defend themselves, but your grossly simplistic view that they're all toxic to us, and that we can't effectively digest them, ignores millions of years of evolutionary arms race
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Humans are primates that evolved to hunt, not forage.
We have developed numerous features conducive to hunting that separates us from other species: feet, hips, shoulders, jaw, sweat glands, and the fact that our breathing is independent of our gait (unlike cats whose respiration is coordinated with their motion), and of course lets not forget our increased cranial capacity.
We've devolved in our capacity to really process plant matter at all, let alone efficiently enough to subsist on--we likely never had a
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Humans are primates that evolved to hunt, not forage.
You're giving a false dilemma. Humans evolved to use both strategies well enough.
We've devolved in our capacity to really process plant matter at all, let alone efficiently enough to subsist on--we likely never had a rumen and for all intents and purposes now have only a vestigial, non-functional caecum.
Nonsense. Human cultures have successfully remained omnivores and vegetarians since our split from the other hominids. There is little evolutionary pressure for a nomadic bunch to "devolve" something so reliably widespread and useful as the ability to eat plants, grains, and seeds. Specific tolerances will have ebbed and flown as we have diversified ourselves throughout the planet's environments, but the overall ability to eat
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Where do you people find this demented crap? Humans are omnivores: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Humans can survive just fine on a plant-based diet.
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Yes, pretty much so. And sweeteners are often worse: Your body thinks there is sugar coming in and starts to produce insulin to prepare. Then nothing comes and your blood sugar drops, making you crave more sweet stuff. That effect is in addition to any other negative ones an artificial sweetener may have and it comes purely from the sweet taste. It is used to increase product consumption though, in a finely balanced combination with other ingredients. The food industry is not any better than, say, the tobac
Closer look department? (Score:2)
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Just like... (Score:2)
People will complain about it (Score:3)
No matter how safe it is, people will make up conspiracy theories about its hazards. Anything to make food taste more pleasant in any way is guaranteed to be criticized by a host of different food zealots, each pushing a different food agenda.
The thing all the food police have in common is that they think you are incompetent to feed yourself and you need them to be your mom and to force you to eat based on their choices instead of yours.
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The thing all the food police have in common is that they think you are incompetent to feed yourself
They don't think that at all. What they think is their employers paid good money to ensure their product stays on the shelf and isn't replaced by something new.
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Ah. Ignorance.
Conspiracy theory pushers need to point at non-believers. That's the whole point of believing in conspiracies: congratulating yourself on being one of the few who know what everyone else doesn't.
I admit I'm ignorant of whatever conspiracy you are pushing. You haven't said which one it is.
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Ah. Ignorance.
Conspiracy theory pushers need to point at non-believers. That's the whole point of believing in conspiracies: congratulating yourself on being one of the few who know what everyone else doesn't.
Indeed. One of the solid results from psychological research. Whether it is flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, diverse food-based cults, covidiots and anti-maskers, other cults, etc. it is always people that believe _they_ have found some important secret that all the non-believers are not aware of and they are now fundamentally superior. They then isolate themselves from any contradictory evidence. This is usually easy because most of these people do not even understand what evidence is and how Science works. Ha
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So many questionable points... (Score:4, Insightful)
TL;DR - they crystallize sucrose around microscopic silica grains, ( it is 1% sand according to TFA) and then claim that the sucrose falls off the silica in small bits once in contact with the tongue and this makes it feel sweeter for the same volume/weight.
I can buy that claim, if we talk about consuming pure sugar the way it comes out of the packaging.
I don't see how it helps in cooking though - where the crystals will be melted/dissolved away.
It is also quite hypocritical/cynical to try and paint "taste" as the major reason behind high sugar consumption, when in reality the main reason is the "rush" or "high" you get from it. Kinda like a drug. Taste is secondary. It is one of the reasons diet cola will never be as popular as the regular one.
Every time, I visit US, it amazes me how everything has sugar in it. Even bread and sausages and salad dressings. Everything you taste has sweetness to it and it is not easy to avoid it. Worse still - most stuff actually had HFCS instead of sucrose. Mustard should not contain HFCS or any sugar !!!
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Every time, I visit US, it amazes me how everything has sugar in it. Even bread and sausages and salad dressings.
You're not entirely wrong, but I think it's worth giving you some context:
When you visit the US, most likely you're doing tourist things. If the US has one thing figured out, it's how to maximize profits. Tourism falls squarely into this category, but it extends everywhere, including into food. So tourist areas want to maximize profits, which means that the food they sell you needs to also maximize profits. This means going with the lowest quality food sold by the biggest companies, who have perfected makin
left handed sugar (Score:3)
The sugar molecule can be reconstructed in a way that makes it innocuous. Most sugars are, from a chemist's viewpoint, right handed. The molecules can be arranged into a left handed mirror image that gives the same taste, but which the body does not recognize as food. It cannot be digested. This study has been going on for more than 30 years (search for 'left handed sugar') and many variations have been discovered and tested. These can be a viable replacement for the sugar that kills us. The complexity and cost of mass production is deemed too high. Perhaps when the massive death rate due to sugar consumption is fully considered, the economics of a truly harmless substitute will be reevaluated. Then we can turn our attention to other carbohydrates like breakfast cereal, bread, rice and potatoes that turn to sugar even as we chew them. It would also help if we didn't accept baby food and other products that addict our children to sugar from birth.
Better to do without? (Score:2)
I think it's likely better to do without very much "sweet" in ones diet.
It seems to me, given enough time, a problem is found with every artificial sweetner. Who knows what effect an altered sugar will have on one's gut bacteria. Meanwhile it's been clearly shown a diet heavy in sweets (regardless of where the "sweet" comes from) encourages the consumption of sweets.
Do without sweets long enough and you stop craving them. Literally the only things in my home that have meaningful amounts of sweetner in them
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I scrolled down for this. Our bodies are not built for very much sugar. The only reason we're in this situation is because when Europeans colonized the West, they discovered how to make lots of sugar using slave labor, and built the whole triangle trade. They got hooked on it, it spread throughout Europe and the West and we've been suffering ever since.
Initially, refined sugar was like a spice, used very sparingly and generally not available to anybody other than the wealthy.
Our bodies simply aren't buil
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Literally the only things in my home that have meaningful amounts of sweetner in them (including the latest trendy "healthy" sources like coconut sugar) are ketchup and BBQ sauce, both of which I use sparingly as I'm not willing to give them up entirely.
Have you explored mustards and hot sauces?
I know this sounds like a ridiculous question, but one thing that has helped me give up crap food for good is adding quality condiments that take dishes to new levels.
The Heatonist [heatonist.com] has hundreds of gourmet hot sauces, from mild to some of the hottest in the world. I tend to like my heat, and I find Los Calientes Rojo an excellent "just a few drops will do you" replacement for ketchup. It's spicy and fruity and a little smoky. Their Scotch Bonnet Mustard is also a hug
2 weeks (Score:2)
I did a test and tried to cut my sugar consumption to 0. It took around two weeks for me not to have cravings anymore. And of course, I had to cook
Y own food.
I also had to read the labels on every food item I bought and that has now become a habit. I was surprising how many things had sugar in them.
On of the fun ones were a “protein bar”. It was mostly carbs.
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Took a bit longer for me (about a year), but has been stable for 30 years now. No cravings for sugar (fruit is fine) and I find stuff with high sugar content pretty much unpalatable.
old school psychology already solved this (Score:2)
Take every man, woman, and child in America. Feed them sugar a drop at a time, and then apply a mild electric shock. After a few months of sessions we'll all eat a lot less sugar.
Why would this be any different? (Score:3)
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Wrong in what way exactly? I'm well on course of dying in a couple decades, but the sweeteners in my soda don't seem to be changing the trajectory much.
Re:It Names Itself (Score:4, Interesting)
It's funny how we keep coming up with these artificial food additives as well as modified natural food substances; we keep finding out they're unhealthy; but somehow we never get it through our thick heads that maybe it's a bad idea...
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Colon and prostrate cancer are the top common forms of cancer in the U.S.
It's probably just a coincidence...
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Indeed. As far as I understand it, the main problem with anything sweet is that is triggers insulin production. If then the sugar does not come (artificial sweetener) or is not "potent" enough (this stuff), your blood-sugar drops and you crave more. Hence best use the real thing, but in moderation. And stay away from sugar (and salt) in processed foods by consuming very little of them.
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Sorry, what about honey?
A rare resource. Very much an exception to have that available in larger quantities.
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They just want their scam going on a bit longer. No enterprise has ever voluntarily reduced their profits.