My question this week:  Are all sugars the same?

high fructose corn syrup

As you can see the simple answer is NO.

Glucose and fructose are both monosaccharides while sucrose and high fructose corn syrup are disaccharides.  Glucose and fructose have the same molecular formula  - C₆H₁₂O₆ – however, you might have noticed that glucose has a six member ring and fructose has only a five member ring.

Fructose is usually associated with fruit sugar this is because the main source of fructose in our diet is usually from fruits and vegetables.

Glucose has a number of sources: grape sugar, blood sugar or corn sugars are the richest sources. Glucose is often listed as dextrose in food ingredients.

Sucrose is the sugar we associate with table sugar. Historically sucrose is extracted from sugar cane or beet sugar. Sucrose can be hydrolyzed with acid or heat to form glucose and fructose – this combination of sucrose, glucose and fructose is also called invert sugar.

It is from a caloric standpoint that these sugars are most remarkably the same. They all provide 4 Cal/g.  – a number consistent with all starch and other digestible carbohydrates.

Of the sugars, fructose is the sweetest and glucose the least sweet.

HFCS is an artificially manufactured sweetener that uses an enzymatic process to convert glucose syrup from corn into a fructose/glucose mixture.

HFCS are cheaper to produce than sucrose.