What is Sugar?

I decided to try and simplify some of the confusion evolving sugar. What is it? Is it good or bad for us? Should we eat a lot, a little or refrain from it altogether?

Lets first start by defining what sugar really is.

Table SugarIn common language sugar is that sweet-white-powdery stuff that is used to sweeten food with. Almost all the forms of sugar that you come across in everyday recipes (brown sugar, crystalline sugar, raw sugar, icing sugar etc) are basically the same chemical substance in a different form.

Let’s delve into the nook and cranny of it, shall we?

The natural sugar we find in fruit comes in the form of glucose and fructose (both are referred to as mono-sachharides). Fruit also contain sucrose, which is basically glucose and fructose “stuck together”. Sucrose, therefore, is a di-sachharide.

Most commercial sugar is, in fact, sucrose, produced primarily from sugarcane or sugar beet. In the process the plants are completely stripped out of any other substances until one is left with pure sucrose.

SugarcaneSugar Beet 

Glucose is the main fuel for living organisms. The cells of our bodies are using glucose as a source of energy by burning it (in the presence of oxygen) into energy, releasing Carbon Dioxide and water as waste products.

Other mono-sachharides (like fructose) will be converted in the liver into glucose, thus leaving us with only glucose which interacts with the cells of our body to produce energy.

And what about sucrose? Sucrose is easily broken down in the intestines into glucose and fructose.

Moving along, what are carbohydrates and how do they relate to sugar?

Carbohydrates (“Carbs”) are all those saccharides we mentioned before (mono-sachharides and di-sachharides, or “simple sugars”), which are sweet in nature. When we come across long chains of carbohydrates, we call these “complex sugars”. They can comprise anything from 3 to literally thousands of sachharides. Most of these poly-sachharides are very difficult to digest. Some cannot be digested at all unless we cook them first, meaning we need to heat them to cause a chemical reaction that will make it easier for our bodies to digest them. Complex sugars do not taste sweet unless we chew them for a very long time, until they start to break down into simple sugars.

Complex sugars are mainly found in grains, starchy vegetables (potatoes, carrots, beetroot, corn etc) and legumes (beans, soy, peas etc).

Next. What is starch?

Starch refers to a complex sugar that is made up of long chains of glucose “stuck together”.

My first logical question, following the fact that our body’s fuel is plain glucose:

Can we only eat table sugar (meaning, refined sucrose that has been extracted of a plant source)? It easily breaks down into glucose and fructose so that will be the optimal food for us, will it not?

It seems that refined sugar (that has no nutrient content for our bodies besides calories) is released into the bloodstream in a very rapid manner. So rapid, actually, that it causes our body some stress as a sudden flux of glucose enters the bloodstream.

On the other hand, when eating sugar in its natural form – mainly in fruit – it is slowly released into the bloodstream, for it is digested among all the other nutrients it is attached to: vitamins, minerals, fibre etc. So the sugar in fruit, eaten in a natural form, doesn’t have the stress effect related to consumption of refined sugar.

It also seems that there’s a correlation between eating highly refined foods and depleting our body from its natural nutrients reserves.

Next question is about complex sugar – meaning, the sugar that is not sweet and that is made of long chains of glucose: if it’s not easily digested, it means the glucose is not released so quickly, so it’s good for us, right?

Well… Depends who you ask! The breakdown process of the complex carbohydrates results in a slow steady flow of glucose into the blood, which is definitely better than eating refined sugars. However the digestion of complex sugars is long and draining for our bodies, thus some people will claim it is far from optimal to consume complex carbohydrates altogether.

Due to the difficulties in digestion of complex carbohydrates, they are often associated with indigestion, namely producing large amounts of gas…

There are so many other topics that relate to sugar. And the question of eating sugar or avoiding it remains.

Personally these days I’m avoiding refined sugar as much as I can, however I embrace fruit that are naturally sweet. It’s important to understand the effects of sugar on your general wellbeing, and related subjects such as diabetes, Candida, obesity. Just do your own research by reading (and experimenting on yourself as much as you can!) so you find the way to relate to sugar that works for you.

Comments

[Joy from Fruvenu]

Thank you for such an informative article Maya. For the majority of the population, having a sweet tooth is always an issue. Knowing the best options and working with those is often just a case of 'education'.
The orange cheesecake does sound divine! Have fun at the cafe' this weekend!