HE-147
all
about
sugars
Back in the “old days” there probably was a 100-pound cloth sugar sack sitting in the pantry. Sweetening hardly ever came into the house except in that big cloth sack, and your mother made sure she had a full one before canning season.

It’s not that simple anymore. Sugar has come out of the pantry to a pretty, easy-to-reach canister on the kitchen counter. Sugar also comes into your house in almost every food product you buy. Sometimes our sugar consumption starts to bother us: are we consuming too much?

Actually, there are over 100 substances that chemists classify as sugar. Along with starches and fiber, all sugars belong to a nutrient group called carbohydrates.

If you are an average U.S. citizen, you consume 130 pounds of sugar each year. Sugar and other sweeteners enter your diet from three different sources: (1) in home-prepared foods, (2) in products manufactured by the food processing industry, or (3) scooped from the sugar bowl at the table. That’s only added sugar. In addition, sugar is in many foods such as fruits and milk.

Only 50 years ago, about two-thirds of the sugar sold in the U. S. was purchased for home use. This meant that the cook had most of the control over the amount of sugar you and the rest of the family consumed.

Today there’s been a complete turnaround; the food processing industry now uses about two-thirds of all the sugar sold in the U. S. This means that much of the sugar we consume is added to foods before we buy them. To reduce the amount of sugar in our diets, we must read labels.

Sucrose (table sugar) is still the most commonly used sugar. The use of com syrup is increasing, especially in food processing. All other sweeteners are used by Americans only in small amounts.

The biggest consumers of sugars and sweeteners are men. Teenage boys consume the most sugar and also the most calories because they are growing rapidly. Women over 35 are the lowest consumers of sugars and sugar-containing foods.
Children get most of their sugar from candy. However, teenagers and young adults consume most of their sugar in soft drinks. In fact, much of the increased use of sugar in the U.S. is due to the great increase in the soft drink industry.

What is a Sugar?
There are plenty of natural sugars. They occur in milk, fruits, vegetables, and grains. The main function of sugars (and all carbohydrates) is to provide energy to the body.

Energy does, indeed, “keep us going.” It is necessary for good health, growth, and proper body function and activity.

The natural sugars supply energy, but the foods in which they occur also give us valuable amounts of vitamins, minerals, protein, and fiber. Sugars by themselves and foods that contain large amounts of sugar are called “low nutrient density” foods. This means that they add calories to your diet but do not provide the added bonus of other nutrients.

The more common sugars in food are glucose, fructose, lactose, maltose, and sucrose. Glucose (also called dextrose just to confuse you) is widely distributed in foods. Fructose (levulose) is found naturally in fruits, and therefore is referred to as fruit sugar. Lactose is the sugar which occurs naturally in milk; maltose (malt sugar) occurs in grains and other starches. Sucrose (table sugar) comes from beets or sugar cane. Brown sugar and powdered sugar are different forms of sucrose.

Some supermarkets will also carry turbinado sugar. Turbinado sugar is partially refined sucrose erroneously called raw sugar.

Syrups, honey, and molasses are sweeteners that are concentrated sugars. Ounce for ounce, these sweeteners have about the same number of calories as table sugar. Honey and molasses are said to contain nutrients that are missing from table sugar and are advertised as being more nutritious.

This statement is just barely true. There are slightly more nutrients in honey and molasses than in pure sugar, which provides only calories. Switching to honey and molasses from sugar may provide an interesting change in taste, but the switch will not drastically improve the nutritional quality of your diet.

All sugars and syrups contain calories and no significant amounts of any nutrients. Perhaps the advantage of honey and molasses over table sugar is their strong flavor.
Because we aren’t accustomed to it, we may use less sweetener and save a few (very few) calories until we learn to like the taste.

So far, we’ve talked about simple carbohydrates - the sugars. There is another whole class of complex carbohydrates. In this class are starch and fiber.

Simple sugars are comprised of one or a combination of two of the monosaccharides: fructose, glucose, and galactose. Each contains the same elements (carbon, hydrogen,
PURDUE UNIVERSITY COOPERATIVE EXTENSION SERVICE • WEST LAFAYETTE, INDIANA