You have most likely heard the phrases fructose, glucose, lactose and sucrose earlier than, and chances are you’ll know that they are all kinds of sugar. However have you learnt how they differ from each other, or whether or not some are higher for you than others? Use our useful information to shed some gentle on the secrets and techniques of sugar…
For extra data, try our useful hub that has all you must learn about sugar, together with lower-sugar recipes and recommendation on the right way to stop sugar.
What are advanced and easy carbohydrates?
Carbohydrates are categorised into two primary teams, advanced and easy.
Complicated carbohydrates are composed of a number of easy sugars, joined collectively by chemical bonds. The extra chains and branches of easy sugars, the extra advanced a carbohydrate is and in flip, the longer it takes to be damaged down by the physique and the much less influence it has on blood sugar ranges. Examples of advanced carbohydrates embrace wholegrains corresponding to jumbo oats, brown rice, spelt, rye and barley.
Easy carbohydrates are both monosaccharides (one sugar molecule) or disaccharides (two sugar molecules). They’re digested rapidly and launch sugars quickly into the bloodstream. The 2 major monosaccharides are glucose and fructose. The 2 main disaccharides are sucrose (composed of glucose and fructose) and lactose (which is made up of galactose and glucose).
Glucose
What’s glucose?
Glucose is the first supply of vitality your physique makes use of and each cell depends on it to perform. Once we speak about blood sugar we’re referring to glucose within the blood. Once we eat carbohydrates, our physique breaks them down into models of glucose. When blood glucose ranges rise, cells within the pancreas launch insulin, signalling cells to take up glucose from the blood. Because the cells take up sugar from the blood, ranges begin to drop.
The dietary profile of glucose
The glycemic index is a rating of how rapidly meals make your blood sugar ranges rise after consuming them. Excessive GI meals are very simply damaged down into glucose. Glucose is the defining commonplace and has a GI worth of 100. Glucose alone doesn’t style significantly candy in comparison with fructose and sucrose.
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How does glucose have an effect on your physique?
Analysis means that, as glucose stimulates insulin launch from the pancreas, it additionally leads to the discharge of two different hormones, leptin and ghrelin. Leptin is called the urge for food suppressor and ghrelin the urge for food increaser. It’s thought that decrease GI meals (corresponding to wholegrains, proteins and people decrease in glucose) suppress ghrelin, due to this fact regulating satiety.
Fructose
What’s fructose?
Fructose or fruit sugar, is an easy sugar naturally occurring in fruit, honey, sucrose and excessive fructose corn syrup. Fructose may be very candy, roughly one-and-a-half instances sweeter than sucrose (white sugar). Due to the worldwide enhance within the consumption of sweeteners in delicate drinks and meals containing excessive fructose corn syrup (HFCS), fructose consumption has quadrupled because the early 1900s.
The dietary profile of fructose
Fructose is absorbed instantly into the bloodstream throughout digestion and has no influence on insulin manufacturing or blood glucose ranges. Consequently, its GI worth is far decrease, on common round 19. It was as soon as thought this made it substitute for desk sugar, however there’s now a rising physique of analysis to query this.
Sweeteners corresponding to HFCS have the next GI worth as a result of presence of glucose. It has been recommended that it’s the glucose content material of those sweeteners that will have contributed to the rise in heart problems and kind 2 diabetes.
How does fructose have an effect on your physique?
Fructose is dealt with by the physique otherwise to glucose as it’s metabolised within the liver. In consequence, blood sugar (glucose) ranges don’t rise as quickly after fructose consumption in comparison with different easy sugars. Once you eat an excessive amount of fructose the liver can’t course of it quick sufficient and as an alternative, begins to make fat which are carried within the blood and saved as triglycerides – the physique’s major type of fats. Research have proven that the consumption of enormous quantities of fructose could result in elevated urge for food by impairing the physique’s skill to make use of insulin and to suppress circulating ghrelin (the appetite-stimulating hormone).
Whereas most diabetics can’t tolerate sucrose, most can tolerate reasonable quantities of fruit and fructose with out lack of blood sugar management. Analysis is but to indicate any detrimental well being results of reasonable consumption of fructose as a part of a balanced eating regimen. Nonetheless, it is value holding in thoughts that the extreme consumption of HFCS and different sweeteners could contribute to elevated blood sugar ranges, blood fat and subsequent weight acquire.
Sucrose
What’s sucrose?
Sucrose is crystallised white sugar produced by the sugar cane plant and might be present in households and meals worldwide. Sucrose is a disaccharide made up of fifty% glucose and 50% fructose and is damaged down quickly into its constituent components.
The dietary profile of sucrose
Attributable to its glucose content material, sucrose has a GI worth of 65. As it’s made up of glucose and fructose, the latter is metabolised within the liver and holds the identical points as these talked about for fructose above. Attributable to its glucose content material, sucrose does result in an elevation in blood glucose. Diabetics ought to due to this fact be aware of meals containing sucrose.
Lactose
What’s lactose?
Lactose is a sugar present in milk. It’s a disaccharide made up of glucose and galactose models. It’s damaged down into the 2 components by an enzyme referred to as lactase. As soon as damaged down, the straightforward sugars might be absorbed into the bloodstream.
The dietary profile of lactose
Complete milk has a GI worth of 41 and is taken into account to be a low GI meals. It’s damaged down slowly and helps to extend the absorption of minerals corresponding to calcium, magnesium and zinc. Some folks expertise lactose intolerance – an incapacity to provide the lactase enzyme that breaks down milk. Lactose intolerance can result in diarrhoea, bloating and different gastrointestinal signs.
Sugar: the underside line
There are two kinds of sugar: naturally occurring sugar like lactose in milk and added sugar, which incorporates desk sugar (sucrose) in addition to concentrated sources like fruit juice.
The present suggestions from the World Well being Organisation (WHO) are that solely 5% of your every day calorie consumption ought to encompass added, or ‘free’ sugars. This equates to roughly seven teaspoons (30g) for an grownup. To place this into perspective, one can of fizzy drink could comprise seven teaspoons or extra, so it is easy to succeed in the really helpful every day quantity, particularly when you think about the sugar added to meals that you do not see.
Just about all of the fibre, phytochemical, vitamin and mineral content material have been faraway from white sugar (sucrose). Consuming too many carbohydrates, significantly easy sugars, might be dangerous to blood sugar management, particularly if you’re insulin resistant, expertise reactive hypoglycaemia or are diabetic. Consuming extra sugar can result in weight acquire, which will increase the danger of coronary heart illness and sort 2 diabetes.
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Jo is a registered nutritionist (RNutr) with the Affiliation for Vitamin with a specialism in public well being. Since graduating from the College of Westminster in 2010, Jo has labored in a wide range of private and non-private contexts, delivering weight administration programmes, group cookery tasks, and company wellness packages. Alongside making an attempt to develop extra of her personal fruit and veg at her allotment, Jo works as a Nutritionist and Well being Coach for Second Nature. She has contributed articles to plenty of vitamin web sites, together with BBC Good Meals..
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