As I promised in my last article on chocolate, I will continue with another important commodity that the purchasing department provides for production. And these are sweeteners. When you say sweetener, almost everyone automatically means sugar. At the same time many exclamation marks arise in connection with problems like obesity, diabetes, etc.
Sugarcane was used in the Eastern Asia already in the year 6000 B.C. Information on it spread out very quickly to Persia and India. But only in the year 600 B.C. discovered Persians the way of sugar extraction. They filled large conic crocks and wooden forms with hot steamed raw juice. Syrup containing non-sugar substances flew out from chilled crystallized mass through a hole at the tip of the cone. Then they tipped out the form and a sugar cone fell out. Western Europe got knowledge of sugar only at the time of The Crusades in the 1096 A.D. Another seven centuries passed by while sugar beet became a substance for sugar extraction.
Andreas Sigismund Marggraf found out in 1747 that sugar content in sugar beet is the same than in sugarcane. His student, Franz Carl Achard, received 50.000 thalers as a reward for sugar extracted from sugar beet that he presented to the Prussian king Wilhelm III. Achard bought a land for this money in Cunern (Silesia) and he built there a first sugar factory in the world in 1801. At that time was sugar a luxury article and only aristocracy could afford it. Sugar changed its status from luxury article packed to closed silver boxes to a basic food article of the present time.
Let's have a look at sugar from the view of family house heating. "Heating" of a human body is pretty the same as heating of a house.
Sugar as source of energy works in our organism similar to gas, coal or wood used in your homes. If you heat a lot, your house or flat are overheated, it is hard to breathe there and we try to get a bit of fresh air.
Sugar represents one of the quickest ways of heating our body i.e. it is an energy source. It is produced from sugar beet or sugarcane. Sugar is, similar to starch, a carbohydrate. Our body is able to decompose sugar much more quickly than fat so sugar is for our body more convenient source of energy. Sugar is a great “fuel” for a human body producing necessary energy on its own from ingested food. If we eat too much, spare energy is stored as fat. Energy value of sugar is less than half compared with fat. 1 g of sugar = 4 KCAL; 1 g of fat = 9 KCAL. Experts on healthy diet and lifestyle recommend cover 50-60 % of our daily energy consumption with carbohydrates (sugar), 10-15% with proteins and 25-30% with fat.
Almost all sweets contain large amount of simple sugars – sucrose, glucose and fructose. Sugar and starch are called saccharides. Sugar is split to glucose during the digestion process and is released to blood circulation and used as source of energy for cells, organs and muscles. Insulin is hormone responsible for control of glucose level in blood and can decrease its level. On the other hand glucagon increases glucose level in blood.
Sucrose (sugar) is product of photosynthesis of every plant. Sugar does not change its chemical composition from the moment of its generation in sugar beet up to the moment of its packing into customer pack. No chemical reactions take place during the entire process of sugar extraction. Sugar is extracted during the process of sugar beet washing. Sugar beet juice is then filtered and thickened during the water evaporation process. Naturally created small crystals are dried and whitened and sold as sugar. Sucrose is truly called as natural products.
Sugar is probably one of the cleanest foodstuffs from the technical point of view. It should contain 99.7 % of sucrose according to standards. Real cleanness of our products is in fact higher. Thanks to high level of cleanness there is a warranty that is does not contain any harmful agents.
So there is no reason why not to eat sweet or sweetened products just due to health reasons.
What and where to put sugar depends only on taste and the way of use.
Attention please!
Sugar is the only nutrient that our brain is able to process. It increases not only productivity of our body but also ability to concentrate. And even with half of calories that fat has. If somebody tells me that he reduced intake of sugar to lose his weight, even this sentence is a proof that his brain does not have enough “fuel” because it does not have sugar and does not have source of energy to use so he talks nonsense. Majority of sugars are digested fast and they become almost immediately a source of energy. Regular eating of small meal portions and sufficient number of complex saccharides help body to control the sugar blood level.
Results of various researches point out that people eating mostly food with higher content of carbohydrates have much lower risk of overweight. Intake of more calories that is the body able to use is the main reason of overweight. If I eat as a logger but do not work as hard as him, I definitely put on weight. If somebody earns more money than is able to use, he saves them and it seams to be pretty normal.
There was a discussion going on in the class of my son among parents on healthy diet and children obesity. Natural history teacher as a main guarantee and expert on healthy diet red nutrition values from different product packs and determined those with high calorie level. When I asked her, comparing to what they have higher calorie level, the only thing she was able to say, after pausing and stammering, were reasons I have already mentioned several times. We do not eat more calories, we just move less. It depends particularly on the diet content and combination of food that we eat. Fats and carbohydrates influence our metabolism differently. While carbohydrates (sugar) are spent in digestion process and this energy is used as first, fats do not have time to be spent and are saved. And that is why it is not true that we put weight on because of sugar.
Assertions on harmfulness of sugar and its impact on overweight have led producers to introduce substitutes. USA began to use a corn-syrup as a substitute for sugar. It was done not due healthy but business reasons. Its production is cheaper, it melts faster, it does not crystallize, and it prolongs shelf-life of foodstuffs and is sweeter in terms of taste. But it also has one dangerous character. While beet-sugar initiates reactions in our body invoking sensation of fullness, corn-sugar does not invoke similar sensation but vice versa it encourages the appetite. Corn-syrup plays in the USA a role of cheap roughage. World Trade Organization recommends cover our daily consumption of sugar only with 10 % of corn-syrup at the most.
Artificial sweeteners work similarly. They just confuse our tongue but no one can lie to our brain. But it will revenge our “deceitfulness” with higher weight.
At the end I would like to give an advice – do not forbid children to eat sweets after meal but avoid artificial sweeteners and in the first place move more. Meeting your colleagues personally brings better results than writing them E-mails or phoning them. Our plants are not so large that it is impossible to walk through them on foot.