Sugar as Culprit?

choi

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Jane E. Brody, A Tax to Combat America’s Sugary Diet. New York Times, Apr.
6, 2010.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/health/06brod.html?scp=1&sq=sugar%20sweetened%20brody&st=cse

Quote:

Soft drinks are "leading source of added sugar and the single largest source
of calories in our diet. * * * Sugary drinks do little to curb the appetite
, perhaps because they are metabolized so quickly.

"When I was a child, the main parental objection to sugar was its role in
tooth decay. * * * Most serious of these risks [associated with excessive
sugar intake] are Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, both as a direct
consequence of extra body weight and, in the case of heart disease, as an
independent risk." (Note the word "independent,"which means "directly"
without increasing body weight first. )


My comment:
(a) The article mentions a few studies, whose online version provides
electronic links. Mercifully, for I read the print first and could not find
those studies on my own.
(b) high-fructose corn syrup

(first developed in 1957; produced by milling corn to produce corn starch,
then processing that starch to yield corn syrup, which is almost entirely
glucose, and then adding enzymes that change most of the glucose into
fructose)

(i) Please click "corn syrup" in the quotation for details.
ii) Both fructose and glucose are isomers, with the same chemical formula
C6H12O6 but different in 3-D: fructose is a pentagon but glucose, a hexagon.
Fructose is far sweeter than glucose.

(c) The "table sugar" is sucrose, which is a disaccharide of one glucose and
one fructose.

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