Fun Food Fact! Not all sugar is the same. What we call sugar, is a group of small carbohydrates with a sweet taste. There are several types of these small carbohydrates. When you are reading a nutrition label, and you see for instance fructose, galactose, glucose, lactose, maltose or sucrose listed, you know there is sugar in the product you are looking at.
It is also possible that an ingredient, almost entirely comprised of sugar, is listed without the word ”sugar” ever being mentioned. A few examples of such ingredients are honey, syrup and fruit butter.
Sweeteners
Not only sugars are sweet. Sugar derivatives and artificial sweeteners, for instance, can be found in food. They influence how we experience what we are eating. Some of these sweeteners can have a much sweeter taste than for example pure beet sugar.[1]Hui, Y. H. (2006). Handbook of food science, technology, and engineering. Boca Raton: Taylor & Francis.[2]Barclay, A. W., Sandall, P., & Shwide-Slavin, C. (2014). The ultimate guide to sugars & sweeteners: discover the taste, use, nutrition, science, and lore of everything from agave nectar to xylitol. New York: The Experiment.
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References
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