December 26, 2020 • 44 mins
Since sugar spread from Polynesia a few thousand years ago, the world has been crazy for it. Insanely high prices, wars and even slavery couldn't undo world's need for a sugar fix. Today that fix is responsible for the obesity epidemic facing the West. Learn all about it in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi friends. Sugar is delicious and it is also not
very good for you. And we did an episode on
Sugar from June Sugar Colon. It powers the Earth and
it truly does. It's a lot to this one. We
probably get it done a two parter, but we shrunk
it down into one episode, as we try to do.
And here we go with Sugar right now. Welcome to
(00:25):
Stuff You should know, a production of I Heart Radios.
How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles Chuck Bryant. How dye uh high
sugar Dune, dun dune. That's a I was thinking about
(00:48):
the earlier at the Archies. That was an archie song.
Oh sugar, honey, honey, dude, dude. See you called Pete
your girlfriend like a sugar or honey or your wife
or whatever, and it's those are all sweet things. Yeah,
that all makes sense. Did you get your head? Yeah?
I mean you wouldn't call you call your wife something bitter,
right like um like Korean melon. I was trying to
(01:14):
think of something bitter. I couldn't think of anything. Come here,
my little Korean melon. I bet someone said that. Who
I don't know someone Korean, No, and Korea they just
call him melons. That's true. Man, this is the worst
start ever. This is the worst ever. I knew we
would achieve it. We've been building towards well. We top
(01:34):
ourselves every episode. Really, that's right, um Chuck, Yes, have
you ever tasted sugar? I have. I'm trying to bring
it back from the break. Yes, I have, I have to.
Sugar is a big popular sweetener these days. It is
uh and it's been around for a while. I don't
(01:54):
know if you know this or not, but apparently they
think sugar is indigenous to the island known as New
Guinea in the South Pacific around Polynesia, and um that
as long as five thousand to eight thousand years ago
the Polynesians were cultivating it, yeah, and going like this
(02:16):
is the jam, sweet and yummy and sweet energy, and
it makes us fat. Remember that Simpsons where we're I
guess Bart grows up to be like a paid taste
tester and like he drinks that soda and like turns
into like this horrible, huge, disfigured thing and he goes
sweet and the guy with the clipboard goes pleasing taste
(02:39):
some monsterism you remember, I don't remember that it was great?
Was that the one where they was there all of
their future selves. No, it was like just a momentary
day dream and it goes back to like his normal
self and he's like cool, like he can't wait to
grow up to be a professional taste. You know the
(02:59):
table reading he set out on that should be coming out.
I can't wait this year. Right, it was a good one. Yeah,
it should be coming out. It's exciting. I'm excited. We
can't say what it's about. No, I don't know if
we can. We're just covering. We're gonna air on the
side of caution because the last one we want us
for the symptoms to be mad at us after all
these years for real? Yeah, alright, So where are we, sugar?
(03:22):
So I guess Apparently island hopped from New Guinea across Polynesia,
made its way up to Indonesia and then finally landed
in India. And when it was in India, it really
started to spread. Everything spread from India back then trade
(03:43):
routes and thanks to the Crusades, it was brought to
Western Europe. Well even before that, the Persians started conquering
the land and they encountered sugar and brought that with them,
that's right. And then you got Columbus, that jerk brought
sugarcane itself to the Caribbean and said, you know, like
(04:03):
some some roots samplings, and said, let's try and plant
this stuff here. And it turned out it was a
great place to plant sugarcane, It really was, because sugarcane
is a tropical plant. Yeah, the cane, you can't grow
it any just anywhere, but you can grow it in
places like South America, the Caribbean, South Africa, southern United States,
(04:25):
hot places, India, as we already mentioned. And it just
kind of spread like wildfire across the world, especially once
it came to what's known as the New World, like
you said, via Columbus. Unfortunately, it also was and it
became an agent of slavery, Yes, it certainly did. It
(04:49):
fueled the slave trade for quite a while. Um and
then by seventeen fifty there were a hundred and twenty
sugar refineries in Britain. They called it white gold, and uh,
it was up until that point it had been kind
of a luxury. Well a little before that it beat
it became a little more widespread. It was a complete
luxury like literally it was for royalty pretty much. It
(05:11):
was so rare and hard to come by. Um. Apparently
the first enter, the first Seaborn International Sugar Exchange was
between Venice and England in thirteen nineteen. I saw that
Venice was the first place where they were like refining
it really well, right, and the Venetians where that was
(05:32):
a merchant city if there ever was one. So they
were selling it and one of the places they sold
the first place they sold it to overseas was England,
and it was in thirteen nineteen and they sold fifty
tons for what's the equivalent of about eleven million dollars today,
and that's tons with an N N E. I'm sure
so yes, And right now you could get that for
(05:52):
about twenty thousand dollars. It was eleven million dollars back then,
so it was very very expensive. But then two things
happened that opened the sugar industry and made it available
to the general public. Uh. The Reformation, which actually strangely
led to a decrease in honey because monasteries were the
(06:16):
major producers of honey. Monks kept bees, and the Reformation
led to a closure of a lot of monasteries, and um. Secondly,
sugar just became more available. Like those two things happened
at the same time, and all of a sudden it
was something that the average person could get their hands on.
And it actually led to a huge increase in tea consumption.
(06:39):
Oh yeah, because before then people drank tea. But once
they started putting sugar in their tea, they're like, we
love tea, and that's when it became like the the
national drink of Great Britain. Man, I love a good
English tea with a little cream and little sugar in it.
Just delicious. Your t guy, I like the Herby kind more. No,
I like it all man. I love green tea, I
(07:00):
love English breakfast tea. I love black tea. I'll even
do a little I'll try it up every now and then.
I'm I'm into all of it. That's a wild sidewalker, uh.
And from about eighteen fifteen, there was a lot of
warring going on in Europe and there were naval blockades
by Britain that basically Europe needed that sugar fix and
(07:23):
they were like, but you can't cut us off. We
love sugar now. And so in seventeen forty seven, they
realized that the sugar beat, which is the other way
you can get sugar, was a great way to do it,
and that's how they get their sugar today still. And
the beat is um looks like a beat that's not purple.
It's a root and it grows up out of the ground.
Looks like a little uh, just sort of whitish, light brown. Yeah,
(07:48):
sort of like a turnip. But it's sweet. It is
about seventeen percent of the sugar beat is uh can
eventually become sugar, as opposed to only about ten percent
in the cane, which I thought was unusual. Yeah, so
you have these two plants that can be processed separately,
independently and both will produce is sugar indistinguishable to the
(08:11):
average person, pretty neat. And the reason why, chuck, the
reason why that why it would be indistinguishable is because
all plants have sugar. That's right. It's a carbohydrate, a
simple carbohydrate, and um sugar is a part of photosynthesis.
But you can't go out and get, you know, a
blade of switch grass and get enough sugar out of
(08:33):
it to make sugar, even though the sugar in it
it's only abundant enough in the beet in the cane
to really produce sugar. Sugar exactly, but sugars is kind
of this um. It's it's a molecule that powers the earth. Yeah,
really like humans, plants, everything gets is powered by sugar.
(08:55):
It's pretty neat. It is pretty neat. Uh. It is
also as a you can be use it as a preservative. Um.
It prevents bacteria from growing in jam um. Sometimes you
can change the texture. They use it as like a
food additive to make something look and feel different, not
only just taste different. They're like, this doesn't put fuzzy
little jackets on people's teeth when they eat it. Enough,
(09:18):
So let's add some sugar. And our favorite use of
sugar is to make booze. Accelerates fermentation. And my favorite
uses of sugar are to make booze and to make
Reese's Pieces. Okay, let's not leave that out. It's a
it's an important part of the production of alcohol and
(09:39):
Reese's Pieces and Reese's Pieces, and it does make the
world go round. And the world actually produces quite a
bit of sugar. So in this article from a few
years ago, it says that um the world made about
seventy eight million tons. That's seventy one metric tons of
sugarcane annually. Is that accurate? Still? Do you know? Well,
(10:02):
it's just sugarcane. But I know that sugarcane accounts for
eighty percent of sugar production about and then sugar beats
account for about um But in I think two thousand thirteen,
the world produced a hundred and sixty five million metric
tons of sugar. Okay, yeah, so I guess you'd have
(10:25):
to be a mathematician to figure out that formula. But
plus you probably have to have more info than weeds.
This cave. The cane sugar cane looks sort of like bamboo,
the stock does. It's a tropical grass. To the top
of it looks grassy, and it takes about a year
or to grow. It takes about eighteen months from planting.
But once it's planted, you know, you cut it back
(10:47):
to the route and it will take another twelve months
for that to grow back up to be harvested again.
So what's the eighteen months thing? Eight months is if
you plan at brand new, like from from seed, I guess,
and it grows and breaks they call him cane brakes
which I always think is like one of the neaterer
like Earth science terms cane brakes, cane brake. Uh, it
(11:09):
is grown and not always um refined near where it's grown,
but it is harvested and u and processed initially close
to where it's grown, so it doesn't rot, sort of
like like when we did coffee. You know, you want
to do most of that stuff near where it's grown.
And there are some stuffs you have to take to
(11:30):
harvest sugar at least even get it to the to
the raw state. But yeah, not every processing place refines
it all the way to what we would call table. Yeah,
sometimes it's sent to a refinery, so I guess we
can cover that in broad strokes here. But it, I mean,
it's pretty complicated. And yeah, I mean if you're looking
(11:50):
for the end all be all of how sugar is produced,
then go watching our long video on YouTube. What was it?
Remember how how um credibly complex chocolate making is. Remember
I love all these These are some of my favorite ones. Salt, sugar, coffee, commodities. Yeah,
the commodity sweet. We gotta do tea. We haven't done tea, okay,
(12:12):
and wine we still haven't done wine. Yet. Yeah. That
one that just bugs me that we've got a great
offer from a nice guy. I don't have his name
in my memory, but I have his email in a safholder. Yeah,
and he was like, you need some help with this stuff.
I've got experts. We're ready to talk to you about wine.
That could that should be a sweet That's a dense,
dense topic. All right, so sugar beets, let's talk about
(12:36):
that in the process. Um, usually they're gonna extract over
the winter months between September and February. And as we
said earlier, sugar beat is about seventeen percent sugar. Yeah,
so not too bad bang for your buck wise, you know,
I mean considering the cane is only ten percent. Yeah,
I mean you could pick it up and eat it
(12:56):
and be like, this is pretty sweet. Oh yeah, seven,
I guess seventeen percent it And if you're in Russia
you could That's true. That's their racist pieces sugar beets.
Uh in a starting international incident. No things are tense
right now, you know, Yeah, between US and in Russia. Yeah,
it's like nineteen seventies seven. Again, Well, they kicking us
(13:18):
out of the space station. I know. Star Wars just
came out. Uh. So, if you're gonna process sugar beet,
you're gonna slice it and you're gonna put it in
hot water and you're gonna boil it, and it's similar
to sugarcane. They're gonna make a sugary juice. Then they're
gonna filter it, purify it, concentrate it, isolate those sugars,
(13:39):
and eventually you're gonna get sugar crystals developing because you
send that syrupy juice through what's called a centrifuge, and
that's going to separate the crystal from what is known
as the mother liquor whatever is left which is one
of my favorite terms. Now, when whatever is left over
that's not crystal is mother liquor like byproducts and the
(14:00):
original juice. And apparently that can be uh extracted a
few times, I would guess, so to get all the
crystals out of it. Yeah, and I think sometimes they
need to add a little sugar dust to spur that crystallization. Wow,
it sounds like a magical process. It was mother liquor.
There's sugar dust, and actually know that you bring up
(14:21):
sugar dusts, you know, do you remember down in Savannah
like two thousand seven eight, that's sugar refinery that exploded.
It was sugar that exploded in the air. Yeah, sugar
dust is particular matter, and when it gets into the air,
it can catch fire and explode. And it did. It
blew that place sky high. Yeah. When was that? I
(14:45):
wrote about it when I got here, so I would
guess like two thousand seven or two thousand and eight.
What was the article like, how can sugar explode? I
think I remember seeing that. We should have touched on that.
I guess we just did. But I mean, like you
you go back and check out that now that you
realize that it was just sugar. Yeah, that blew that
place up. It it formed a crater. Basically, it just
(15:09):
blew the whole refiner. Any flour could do that too, right,
same principle. Yeah, any particulate matter I can do that.
I think can it's nutty? Yeah? Um, alright, So sugarcane
is a very similar process. They're gonna pulverize the stalk um,
add water and lime and that's going to be your
syrupy sweet juice and not lime like limestone. Yeah, not
(15:32):
like squeeze limes into it. I had to double check, No,
you're right, because it's tropical, you know exactly. Uh, And
they're also going to run that through this interfuge, and
you're gonna get your mother liquor in your crystals, and
that is also going to be washed and filtered and
refined further until you get your sugary white goodness. You know.
Evaporations going on. It's it's it's one of those things
(15:55):
that sounds complicated, but it's actually pretty simple. It's the
same as when you're like making a simple syrup at home.
You're boiling sugar and water. It evaporates off, and you're
gonna end up with something super sweet. So chuck their
byproducts to this whole process. Essentially, molasses is chief among them. Yeah,
I never knew that. Yeah, it's a byproduct that comes
(16:17):
from boiling sugar. Right, Yeah, I mean it's it's basically
the Yeah, it's it's it's the dark like that. That's
what makes brown sugar dark or sugar in the raw
dark is molasses. Right. The molasses isn't extracted as much
as it is with refined white sugar. It's fine. White
(16:37):
sugar has zero molasses in it, like sugar in the
raw has more and more, it's less refined um. And
then the greatest byproduct of molasses is of course rum.
Yeah yeah, I put a little molasses in my when
I make melin barbecue sauce. Oh yeah that's good. Yeah,
that's nice. Another byproduct is called bagas, and that is um,
(16:59):
the pulp essentially of the cane. Are you making these
words up? No? Those are rewards. What mother looking in bagas?
But gas we I think another process we studied. It's
not it's not central just a sugar. It's just the
pulpy fibrous matter leftover from this kind of process. I
wonder what we talked about that and was it? Was
(17:21):
it coffee? Now maybe maybe maybe? But the ba gas
is used a big gas because I think I remembers
discussing whether it was a big gass or by gas.
It's bagas I listened to it today. Um yeah, we
definitely cover that before. I'm starting to feel like an
old man because when you when we have seven under
topics or so oh yeah, like literally vaguely familiar. But yeah,
(17:44):
I want to sound dumb, so you don't say anything
and they just spend the next week and your head
going over this. I'm telling you one day we were
going to rerecord a show and not realize it, man,
and we're going to hear about it. Well, what was it?
It was still skulls. You know, we never release that one, right,
But remember I was like, I thought for sure we
(18:05):
recorded this, no dreams. What it was. We went to
record dreams and we just were it just wasn't there. Yeah.
So but gas we definitely talked about. And the gas
is a great byproduct because that can be used to
power the sugar refinery. They actually burned that as fuel
(18:26):
to create the steam used to power some of these machines.
So that is one way that sugar production can be green. Um. However,
mass production of anything like this isn't super green because
they're transporting stuff over large distances and there's clear cutting
of land. Well that's a big one with with sugar. Yeah,
deforestation like in the Amazon, right and yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah.
(18:47):
So even though they're using things like the gas as
a byproduct to help power why is that funny? Because
I always hear by gas in my head okay anytime
you say it. But is not a looked upon as
one of the more green products that is used and produced,
like they have to use baby lambs to really refine
(19:09):
it to its whitest. Not true, Well, it uses their
souls at least, I guess, if you want to get technical,
the souls of baby lambs, and then they're just left
to wander the earth for the rest of their natural lives,
like not feeling anything. So there's a lot of types
(19:49):
of sugar. There are. Um, when you think about sugar,
especially here in the West, you think, oh, that really white,
like really pretty powdery granular stuff, and that's called table sugar,
and that's what's known as sucros. That's right, And sucros
is glucose and fruit toast sucros also apparently occurs naturally.
(20:11):
But there's a lot of different types of sugar that
you're gonna find in plants, uh, and from some animals too. Yeah. Yeah,
So cow's milk contains lactose and gullactose, both of which
are sugars um sucros. Again, that's typically table sugar, but
(20:32):
I believe you can find that in plants, and that's
glucose and fructose, like you said, yeah, and it's even
one molecule glucose, one molecule fruit toast put them together,
you've got sucros fruit toast is commonly found in fruits. Yeah. Uh,
it's also found in honey fruit toastes. And then um, glucose.
(20:54):
This is the one you commonly think of when you
think the body and sugar, because gluco us is what
the body runs on. And we'll talk about that a
little more in depth than a little bit. Yeah, and
that's in honey and fruits and veggies. And then something
called zylos, which I've never heard of, that's in wood
and straw. It's pretty interesting. Yeah, there's a sugar alcohol
(21:15):
called zilattle. Yeah, that's very sweet. Yeah. There's sugar alcohols
and they supposedly um circumvent your blood sugar, your normal
metabolic blood sugar process, so they taste sweet but they
don't have any impact on your blood sugar. And one
of them is called zio Litle zioltle, and that's the
(21:35):
name of the product. Yeah. There's this uh Danish or
Swedish gum that's like the best sugar free gum you
can possibly get your hands on. It's called Ziolidle. This
is so good. Terrible name though it is, but it's
named after the sugar, which apparently is based on I
guess it's probably would sugar alcohol. Wow, yeah, it's pretty creative.
(22:00):
I didn't. I'm just recounting here, so I know I
didn't know. You didn't You weren't complimenting me. Uh. Sugar
comes in different granulations and from icing sugar, which is
if you've ever heard of confection or sugar that you
daintily sprinkle on top of your Um what's it called?
(22:20):
What did you get at the fair? Your funnel cake?
Those are so good? They are I haven't had one
year or so. Yeah, they're good. I never like I got.
I don't indulge in that stuff. Man, what why is
going on? Chuck? Well, you know, I'm I'm overweight and
like it's there's just like you don't want to be
the overweight guy walking up to the funnel cake stand,
you know, Well that's why you sneak around the back,
(22:42):
get someone else to go get it, and you eat
in the alley. Cry. I've never done that. No, I
avoid that stuff. Ice Cream is my big downfall. Oh
it's your ice cream? What's your favorite? Um? Well, Ben
and Jerry's like, but which one? Chubby hubb Oh that's
a good one. Ironically. Yeah, Um, I gotta tell you.
(23:04):
Have you had Bluebell? Yeah? Okay? Blue Bell is like
the third best selling ice cream brand country, But you
can only get it in like seven states, that's how
good it is. And um, they have a banana pudding
flavor that is if you're in Nevada and you can't,
(23:25):
the closest you can get it is in Mississippi. It's
worth driving there for and it's like eight bucks for
like a gallon or a half gallons, ridiculously expensive, but
it is so good. All of their flavors are good,
but their banana putting one is like it's just I'm
about to cry. Yeah there. Um, their radio commercials or
have you heard those? The songs are horrible. Oh it's
(23:47):
the funniest stuff you've ever heard. The TV version of
it is even worse. Yeah, it seems like a joke,
Like are they serious or is this campy? Oh? They're serious.
It's like an eighty five year old like braptist preachers
and are you do like their ads? It's it is.
It's campy. It's so it's and they don't mean it.
It is For those of you who don't know the songs.
(24:09):
It's literally like, you know, mama's baking the apple pie
and putting in the window sill and like the picket
fences outside, and we're eating bluebell ice cream because it
tastes like the good old days. It's really funny. It
rhymes more than that, but that's just it. I'm sure
it's on YouTube just type blue belt ice cream. Man, Yeah,
it's good stuff. Um Man. That was a nice sidetrack.
(24:31):
So then you got castor sugar, which is larger than
powdered sugar but smaller than granulated sugar. Yeah, which I
didn't know about until like a couple of months ago.
I don't remember what recipe it was, but there was
a recipe that you me was making that like called
for castor sugar. She was like what both of us were, Yeah,
you apparently you can make it if like with the
coffee grinder, you can grind your regular sugar. Yes, she
(24:51):
came across that. I think you finally founder she ordered
it online or something like that. But she's making a
meringue because they used a lot of morangue. Ex Evidently
I don't remember, maybe I don't remember what did she
need that for? I'll figure it out on my own
time and let everybody know in the next episode. How
(25:12):
about that, rather than all of us sitting here until
I remember what the recipes and then I pick up
the phone and collar and asked, right, that's good radio,
my friend. Uh. Then you have your granulated sugar, and
this is your table sugar. And then you've got preserving sugar,
which looks sort of like sort of rock salty. It's
chunkier or like sea salt, right course, sea salt sweeter
than sea salt though, and that's used to preserve yes,
(25:34):
much sweeter. Uh. Yeah, because that's another property of sugar
is it's a preservative as well. Um, you can throw
it into some jam if you want to make an
extra sweet, but it'll also keep the bacteria away at bay,
that's right, which is why, like you said, simple syrup
can last for so long. Yeah, you can just make
(25:56):
that and put it on your bar at riom temperature. Right. Yeah,
I'm keep it in the but you you keep it
on hand, make it yourself. It's very easy. Plus also,
if you like toss some lavender in there, got lavender
simple syrup which goes with anything with gin in it. Yeah, Oh,
it's so good. Um. You can put in some like
(26:17):
all spice and some an a seed and stuff like that.
Lemon verbina, No, but I have made lemon like just
from the the peel. Oh yeah. Lemon verbena is like
just the green leaf. We grow a lot of that
in the herb garden and if you smash it up,
it smells so good, like I imagine it would be
good muddled in a drink if I was into that.
(26:38):
Are you not? You know that I'm not into the cocktails.
I thought you were whiskey over ice. So you can
jazz it up a little bit here there, No, not me. Okay.
Uh So I guess we should talk a little bit
about high fruit dost corn syrup. We did a whole
show on it, yeah, which you can go back and
listen to. But it bears mentioning here because there's a
lot of it gets a bad rap um and the
(27:02):
evidence is sort of inconclusive right now. Yeah, yeah, I
think what we determined is it's not necessarily any worse
feed than sugar, but it's in a lot more stuff
and you may not know it. I don't remember what
we concluded. What my understanding is at this point, and
that was from two thousand nine. UM, there's a really
great article on the New York Times called It's Sugar Toxic.
(27:24):
It's very long, but it's very in depth, and it
really goes into the um the evidence that's out there
that it really is the highlights. Well, like you said,
high fruit toast corn syrup isn't molecularly different very much
from sucrose, which is sugar. Most high fruit toast corn
(27:45):
syrup or the stuff that's most widely used, is like
fruit toast to glucoast, So that five difference UM and
fruit toast shouldn't make much difference, but apparently it does.
The other aspect of high frue toast corn syrup is
that that extra fructoast are all that fruit toast that
(28:09):
is processed in the liver. Any cell in your body
can process glucose. When you eat something that has glucose
in it, UH, your pancreas releases insulin, and insulin goes
hey open up cells and the glucose goes in and
it's converted. It's biochemical energy is converted to a t
P and then you have this packet of energy that
(28:29):
can be used by any cell any cell can do that,
which means your entire body can metabolize glucose. Fructoast has
to be broken down into glucose, and that's done in
the liver. The liver has some options to it chuck
when it's presented with fruit toast. It can use it
(28:49):
for energy, it can convert it into fats in the
blood stream, which are called triglycerides, or it can convert
it into fat stores fat. Yeah right, that's if you
have too much of it, right, yeah. Now, with high
fruc toast corn syrup, apparently evidence shows that when it
(29:10):
hits the liver, it's just automatically converted to fat, and
that the speed with which it's metabolized also has an
effect on how much or how frequently it's converted to fat.
And with high fruit toast corn syrup, it's syrup, and
syrup apparently hits the liver a lot faster than say,
(29:32):
an equal amount of apples that you're getting fruit toast from,
so it's being converted to fat like automatically. That's why
they think that high fruit toast corn syrup is actually
far worse from you than just regular fruit toast or
even sucros table sugar. Right, while the obesity epidemic is
sort of matched year to year with the introduction of
(29:54):
high fruit toast corn syrup as far as increase um.
So that makes sense. I read an article today that
said that added sugars overall is the problem, whether it's
high frec dose corn syrup or regular added sugar. Well,
that's added sugars in a product. That's the U s
d a's line, and the U s d A doesn't
(30:15):
want to upset the sugar industry or the Cornerfiners Association,
So that's kind of become the predominant government line, like, yeah,
everybody's eating too much sugar, that's the problem. Well, then
there's a whole group of people out there who are saying, like, no,
it's it's yeah, sure that's a problem, but this is
a an even bigger problem with high fructose corn syrup. Yeah,
(30:36):
that makes sense that it's different and it's affecting people differently, right,
and it's not the same as sugar. Well, I think
a lot of people think we're ingesting too much corn
based products. Period. We need to do GMOs at some
point too, you know. Yeah, everyone keeps calling for it.
Some guys send us a book. Yeah yeah, oh yeah, yeah.
(31:00):
Did you read it? No, I haven't read it. Um.
Apparently six of americans calories come from added sugars, which
is just like totally empty calories. So again there's a
there's a big there's an argument over those numbers. Yeah. Sure,
no one really knows, but supposedly the numbers are very
(31:21):
artificially low. Um. And that the average American eats about
ninety five pounds of sugar a year. Oh yeah yeah wow,
and the global average is something like, um sixty six pounds.
But Israel eats something like a hundred and forty five
pounds per person per year. What what that's from sweets? Yeah,
(31:46):
they eat a lot of sugar package foods. Um. Are
we done with HFCs then for now? Yeah? I go
back and listen to the episode. It was a good one,
one of my favorites. Yeah, it's been a while. I'm
to re listen to that, but I didn't get a chance. Um,
(32:25):
So sugar in the body, we've been this also a
hearkens back to our episode on taste it uh corresponds
molecularly on your with your taste buds on the tongue
because of the shape of the molecule. We talked about
that the molecules are shaped to fit. You know, when
sugar hits it, it matches up perfectly with that molecule
and sends a message said, hey, there's something sweet as
(32:46):
opposed to salty or bitter or sour or umami. Fi right,
this say is four and then names five, which I
thought was I even changed it on my sheet. Um.
And they reckon in something that I do not recommend,
which is uh, if something tastes sweet in the wild,
(33:07):
it's more likely to be safe to eat than something bitter.
It's sort of true. But you should never ever go
and like in a survival scenario and just try and
eat something even a little bit. Um. There's a test
you can do which I won't get into, but it
involves like rubbing on your skin first, waiting a certain
amount of time. They may be touching it to your tongue,
(33:27):
waiting a certain amount of time. But you should never
just go like, I wonder if this is edible, let
me taste it? Right, It's not a good idea good
going even if it is sweet. You're a survivalist. I
know some things, so you know, we said sugar is
found in all plants, just to varying degrees. UM and
plants create sugar is a byproduct of photosynthesis, and they
(33:49):
use it for energy for growth. They also use it
to They take sugars and turn them into more complex
sugars to use for like um sell you their structure
like cellulose um. But they also use sugar in their
nectar to attract bees and other things to help them pollinate. Yeah,
(34:11):
and and propagate their species because it's sweet stuff. Yeah.
I love it when I see the little bee getting
in there getting a little something sweet. Yeah, I feel
like they're getting a little treat, you know, that's right,
And then they're vomiting it up and we eat it
as honey. That's true. Uh, sugar is bad for your teeth.
Everyone knows that. Um specifically, when you eat sugar, it's
(34:35):
gonna form something called a glyco protein, that little sweater
on your teeth. And bacteria love to eat that stuff
and then they love to poop out lactic acid afterwards,
unto your teeth. Yes, specifically stripped a caucus mutans, that's
the culprit for cavities. We've said stripped a caucus before
and that's not a good word. No, but there's different
(34:57):
kinds of strap. Okay um. But when they p about
that lactic acid, that's what's on your enamel, that's what's
gonna wear it on your teeth. So eating sugary stuff
really is bad for your teeth. That's not like something
your mom tells you. That's a lie. And the bacteria
also provide or produces a biofilm around all of this
stuff which traps it in there and traps in the
lactic acid as well. So you're in trouble. Yeah, you're dead,
(35:22):
not dead, but you make it diabetes. Yeah, you can
get diabetes um from too much sugar and that that
apparently is um. It's crazy that there's a real parallel
between the six country study in the seven country study
that we talked about in the Paleo Diet episode of fats,
apparently there was a rival all along that said it's
(35:46):
not fat, it's sugar. Like we're both after the same problem.
But this guy went after fats, this other guy went
after sugar. And now they're starting to think, like now
that they're thinking it's not fats after all, that contributed
to like heart disease and obesity that they think is
actually sugar, and the the way that it's sugar is
through something called metabolic syndrome, to where if you eat
(36:09):
too much sugar, your body becomes resistant to insulin. And
remember insulin gets glucose out of the blood stream and
into your cells and is converted to energy. Well, if
your body starts sucking at doing that, then you have
a lot more glucose in your blood stream, which means
you're pancreases producing more and more insulin. Insulin remember, triggers
fat storage, So you have more and more insulin, you
(36:32):
have more and more fat storage, you have obesity, you
have heart disease, and they think that possibly the number
one contributor to heart attacks is metabolic syndrome and not
necessarily saturated fats. Right. Interesting, But as a result of
this aside result is insulin, you develop your diabetes. Type
(36:53):
two diabetes is the result of insulin resistance where you
have to inject insulin into your body because your body
is not producing enough any longer because it's overtaxed your pancreases. Yeah,
we got a lot of great responses from the Paleo episode.
It was a really interesting one. Yeah, and people saying, like, dudes,
we know so little still about nutrition, and things are
(37:15):
changing so much with the things we eat and put
in our body that it's hard to keep up, which
is why it's so insulting when some industry that has
a vested interest in so they got all figured out. Yeah,
and don't worry about it, just keep eating it. You
know that that's that's insulting. All right, Can sugar power
your car? Yes? How I'll explain. There's a couple of ways. Um,
(37:38):
So there's sugar based ethanol, which Brazil was basically running
on for many years. I didn't realize that they're big
into flex fuels and ethanol. They were basically energy independent
in the first decade of the twenty one century because
they said, we're tired of being dependent on foreign oil. Yeah,
(37:59):
let's figure or something out. And they did. They put
all they Yeah, they started looking into sugarcane, making ethanol
from sugarcane, and you know there's like corn based ethanol,
which um, Chris Pallette and I talked about in the
Grass Lena episode, remember that. And apparently ethanol made from
sugarcane as eight hundred times more energy output. And so
(38:23):
they were making ethanol in it. In two thousand eight
of the fuel sold in Brazil was ethanol made from
sugarcane right there in the country. Well, then gas prices
lowered and UM people started using gas again because they'll
use whatever's cheapest. But Brazil, even though it's on its heels,
(38:43):
the ethanol industry there is they proved it's a completely
viable alternative fuel. Yeah. The problem though, again with UM
refining more and more sugar for these purposes is the
deforestation and worker wages. And I feel like anytime we've
covered any commodity like this, there's some workers somewhere in
(39:04):
the world getting screwed over, and sugar is definitely not
any stranger in that process. Well. Also it drives up
food prices too, yeah, UM, because if if there's two
different huge sectors competing for the same commodity like there,
it's going to drive the price of that commodity up. Yeah,
that's true. So if you have energy and food right
going after sugar prices, sugar goes up, right. I wish
(39:27):
people could have seen that demonstration. He really brings it home. Uh.
And what else is the other I remember, I think
we talked about this too. Uh, sugar devouring microorganisms basically
feeding on sugar and making energy in the process. Yeah,
that's a like viable, viable way in the future maybe
to power things. Yeah, so there's a certain certain types
(39:49):
of microbes are more sugar hungry than others. Yeah. But yeah,
when they're eating sugar, they managed to separate electrons and
loosen loosen electrons, and as the electrons flow, as we
mentioned in our electricity episode, the flow of electrons is electricity.
So if you direct that flow across like some something
(40:10):
that can use it, you create a current. And the
cool thing about microbial fuel cells is when that electron
makes it to the other side, it um combines to
form water. So that's the byproduct like this. So it
it truly is a very um environmentally friendly alternative fuel. Yeah,
(40:30):
we did. We covered that at some point too. I remember,
it's our world is getting smaller because we're explaining it.
That's right. You got anything else? No, I don't think so, mother, liquor,
the gas, all these words I made up just for
the show. You did good with the making up the words, man, Thanks. Yeah,
(40:53):
I don't have anything else, chuck um. But if you
want to learn more about sugar. I'm sure there's some
words we left out of this article. You can type
sugar into the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
And uh, since I said search bar, it's time for
a listener mail. I'm gonna call this refuting listener mail.
(41:15):
We read a listener mail from a creationist not too
long ago, man that got a certain response from some quarters. Yeah,
so then a lot of people right in responding to
that listener mail. So we might just continue this for
the next year just reading rebuttals. H Hey, guys, you
received an email from a creation that's explaining that both
creationists and scientists believe in natural selection, and that both
(41:37):
groups believe in micro evolution but disagree on macro evolution.
What the person did not mention is that macro and
micro evolution describe the same process of natural selection, just
on different timetables. Uh, micro a short term, macros long term.
It simply does not make sense that natural selection works
on the short term, but it's somehow reversed on the
long term. Natural selection introduces changes to population subgroup as
(42:01):
they adapt to their environment, but the changes are small.
The population subgroup can naturally breed with the original population
that is micro revolution. Once it changes are significant enough
that the subgroup can no longer naturally and successfully breed
with the parent population, the subgroup is considered a new species.
That's a special event, that it's macro evolution. To believe
(42:22):
in micro and not macro is to ignore how nature works.
Say you put two separate populations of the same species
put in very different environments. Each population would slowly adapt
to its new environment and change over time micro evolution,
each group will become better adapted to its new environment,
and the differences between the two groups will only grow
(42:42):
in time. However, if you don't believe in macro revolution,
you don't believe in new species. So you have to
believe that no matter how different each group becomes, nature
does not work like this. Also, the previous writer claimed
to be a creationist botanist, and that is like a
doctor does not believe in germ theory. I'm sure they
might exist, but I would definitely take their expertise with
(43:05):
a large dose of salt. Quite a rebuttal. Yeah, and
I didn't have a name. I feel bad, so I'm
just I'm gonna say thanks you, Thanks Richard Dawkins. I
appreciate that so the evolutionists have rebutted, what say you creationists?
Let us know? And everybody stopped tweeting and sending emails
(43:27):
about how dare we put a creationists views on and
listener mail? Yeah. Yeah, there's no way to go through
life trying to silence your opponents. Yeah, your debate and engage.
I was surprised there were a lot of people that
said you shouldn't give equal time to this stuff because
it's just not true. Yeah. Somebody said, Um, I thought
(43:48):
discovery stood for something interesting. Yeah, well, hey, I think
debate is healthy and they think you're not right either,
So like you know, yep, debate is healthy. Chuck exactly. Um.
If not, Bill and I wouldn't have done it, boom.
(44:09):
If you want to contribute to the debate, we want
to hear from you. You can tweet to us at
s y SK podcast. You can join us on Facebook
dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know, send us an
email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com,
and as always, check us out at our home on
the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. Stuff you
Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff
(44:30):
Works for more podcasts for my Heart Radio Because at
the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Hi friends. Sugar is delicious and it is also not
very good for you. And we did an episode on
Sugar from June Sugar Colon. It powers the Earth and
it truly does. It's a lot to this one. We
probably get it done a two parter, but we shrunk
it down into one episode, as we try to do.
And here we go with Sugar right now. Welcome to
(00:25):
Stuff You should know, a production of I Heart Radios.
How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles Chuck Bryant. How dye uh high
sugar Dune, dun dune. That's a I was thinking about
(00:48):
the earlier at the Archies. That was an archie song.
Oh sugar, honey, honey, dude, dude. See you called Pete
your girlfriend like a sugar or honey or your wife
or whatever, and it's those are all sweet things. Yeah,
that all makes sense. Did you get your head? Yeah?
I mean you wouldn't call you call your wife something bitter,
right like um like Korean melon. I was trying to
(01:14):
think of something bitter. I couldn't think of anything. Come here,
my little Korean melon. I bet someone said that. Who
I don't know someone Korean, No, and Korea they just
call him melons. That's true. Man, this is the worst
start ever. This is the worst ever. I knew we
would achieve it. We've been building towards well. We top
(01:34):
ourselves every episode. Really, that's right, um Chuck, Yes, have
you ever tasted sugar? I have. I'm trying to bring
it back from the break. Yes, I have, I have to.
Sugar is a big popular sweetener these days. It is
uh and it's been around for a while. I don't
(01:54):
know if you know this or not, but apparently they
think sugar is indigenous to the island known as New
Guinea in the South Pacific around Polynesia, and um that
as long as five thousand to eight thousand years ago
the Polynesians were cultivating it, yeah, and going like this
(02:16):
is the jam, sweet and yummy and sweet energy, and
it makes us fat. Remember that Simpsons where we're I
guess Bart grows up to be like a paid taste
tester and like he drinks that soda and like turns
into like this horrible, huge, disfigured thing and he goes
sweet and the guy with the clipboard goes pleasing taste
(02:39):
some monsterism you remember, I don't remember that it was great?
Was that the one where they was there all of
their future selves. No, it was like just a momentary
day dream and it goes back to like his normal
self and he's like cool, like he can't wait to
grow up to be a professional taste. You know the
(02:59):
table reading he set out on that should be coming out.
I can't wait this year. Right, it was a good one. Yeah,
it should be coming out. It's exciting. I'm excited. We
can't say what it's about. No, I don't know if
we can. We're just covering. We're gonna air on the
side of caution because the last one we want us
for the symptoms to be mad at us after all
these years for real? Yeah, alright, So where are we, sugar?
(03:22):
So I guess Apparently island hopped from New Guinea across Polynesia,
made its way up to Indonesia and then finally landed
in India. And when it was in India, it really
started to spread. Everything spread from India back then trade
(03:43):
routes and thanks to the Crusades, it was brought to
Western Europe. Well even before that, the Persians started conquering
the land and they encountered sugar and brought that with them,
that's right. And then you got Columbus, that jerk brought
sugarcane itself to the Caribbean and said, you know, like
(04:03):
some some roots samplings, and said, let's try and plant
this stuff here. And it turned out it was a
great place to plant sugarcane, It really was, because sugarcane
is a tropical plant. Yeah, the cane, you can't grow
it any just anywhere, but you can grow it in
places like South America, the Caribbean, South Africa, southern United States,
(04:25):
hot places, India, as we already mentioned. And it just
kind of spread like wildfire across the world, especially once
it came to what's known as the New World, like
you said, via Columbus. Unfortunately, it also was and it
became an agent of slavery, Yes, it certainly did. It
(04:49):
fueled the slave trade for quite a while. Um and
then by seventeen fifty there were a hundred and twenty
sugar refineries in Britain. They called it white gold, and uh,
it was up until that point it had been kind
of a luxury. Well a little before that it beat
it became a little more widespread. It was a complete
luxury like literally it was for royalty pretty much. It
(05:11):
was so rare and hard to come by. Um. Apparently
the first enter, the first Seaborn International Sugar Exchange was
between Venice and England in thirteen nineteen. I saw that
Venice was the first place where they were like refining
it really well, right, and the Venetians where that was
(05:32):
a merchant city if there ever was one. So they
were selling it and one of the places they sold
the first place they sold it to overseas was England,
and it was in thirteen nineteen and they sold fifty
tons for what's the equivalent of about eleven million dollars today,
and that's tons with an N N E. I'm sure
so yes, And right now you could get that for
(05:52):
about twenty thousand dollars. It was eleven million dollars back then,
so it was very very expensive. But then two things
happened that opened the sugar industry and made it available
to the general public. Uh. The Reformation, which actually strangely
led to a decrease in honey because monasteries were the
(06:16):
major producers of honey. Monks kept bees, and the Reformation
led to a closure of a lot of monasteries, and um. Secondly,
sugar just became more available. Like those two things happened
at the same time, and all of a sudden it
was something that the average person could get their hands on.
And it actually led to a huge increase in tea consumption.
(06:39):
Oh yeah, because before then people drank tea. But once
they started putting sugar in their tea, they're like, we
love tea, and that's when it became like the the
national drink of Great Britain. Man, I love a good
English tea with a little cream and little sugar in it.
Just delicious. Your t guy, I like the Herby kind more. No,
I like it all man. I love green tea, I
(07:00):
love English breakfast tea. I love black tea. I'll even
do a little I'll try it up every now and then.
I'm I'm into all of it. That's a wild sidewalker, uh.
And from about eighteen fifteen, there was a lot of
warring going on in Europe and there were naval blockades
by Britain that basically Europe needed that sugar fix and
(07:23):
they were like, but you can't cut us off. We
love sugar now. And so in seventeen forty seven, they
realized that the sugar beat, which is the other way
you can get sugar, was a great way to do it,
and that's how they get their sugar today still. And
the beat is um looks like a beat that's not purple.
It's a root and it grows up out of the ground.
Looks like a little uh, just sort of whitish, light brown. Yeah,
(07:48):
sort of like a turnip. But it's sweet. It is
about seventeen percent of the sugar beat is uh can
eventually become sugar, as opposed to only about ten percent
in the cane, which I thought was unusual. Yeah, so
you have these two plants that can be processed separately,
independently and both will produce is sugar indistinguishable to the
(08:11):
average person, pretty neat. And the reason why, chuck, the
reason why that why it would be indistinguishable is because
all plants have sugar. That's right. It's a carbohydrate, a
simple carbohydrate, and um sugar is a part of photosynthesis.
But you can't go out and get, you know, a
blade of switch grass and get enough sugar out of
(08:33):
it to make sugar, even though the sugar in it
it's only abundant enough in the beet in the cane
to really produce sugar. Sugar exactly, but sugars is kind
of this um. It's it's a molecule that powers the earth. Yeah,
really like humans, plants, everything gets is powered by sugar.
(08:55):
It's pretty neat. It is pretty neat. Uh. It is
also as a you can be use it as a preservative. Um.
It prevents bacteria from growing in jam um. Sometimes you
can change the texture. They use it as like a
food additive to make something look and feel different, not
only just taste different. They're like, this doesn't put fuzzy
little jackets on people's teeth when they eat it. Enough,
(09:18):
So let's add some sugar. And our favorite use of
sugar is to make booze. Accelerates fermentation. And my favorite
uses of sugar are to make booze and to make
Reese's Pieces. Okay, let's not leave that out. It's a
it's an important part of the production of alcohol and
(09:39):
Reese's Pieces and Reese's Pieces, and it does make the
world go round. And the world actually produces quite a
bit of sugar. So in this article from a few
years ago, it says that um the world made about
seventy eight million tons. That's seventy one metric tons of
sugarcane annually. Is that accurate? Still? Do you know? Well,
(10:02):
it's just sugarcane. But I know that sugarcane accounts for
eighty percent of sugar production about and then sugar beats
account for about um But in I think two thousand thirteen,
the world produced a hundred and sixty five million metric
tons of sugar. Okay, yeah, so I guess you'd have
(10:25):
to be a mathematician to figure out that formula. But
plus you probably have to have more info than weeds.
This cave. The cane sugar cane looks sort of like bamboo,
the stock does. It's a tropical grass. To the top
of it looks grassy, and it takes about a year
or to grow. It takes about eighteen months from planting.
But once it's planted, you know, you cut it back
(10:47):
to the route and it will take another twelve months
for that to grow back up to be harvested again.
So what's the eighteen months thing? Eight months is if
you plan at brand new, like from from seed, I guess,
and it grows and breaks they call him cane brakes
which I always think is like one of the neaterer
like Earth science terms cane brakes, cane brake. Uh, it
(11:09):
is grown and not always um refined near where it's grown,
but it is harvested and u and processed initially close
to where it's grown, so it doesn't rot, sort of
like like when we did coffee. You know, you want
to do most of that stuff near where it's grown.
And there are some stuffs you have to take to
(11:30):
harvest sugar at least even get it to the to
the raw state. But yeah, not every processing place refines
it all the way to what we would call table. Yeah,
sometimes it's sent to a refinery, so I guess we
can cover that in broad strokes here. But it, I mean,
it's pretty complicated. And yeah, I mean if you're looking
(11:50):
for the end all be all of how sugar is produced,
then go watching our long video on YouTube. What was it?
Remember how how um credibly complex chocolate making is. Remember
I love all these These are some of my favorite ones. Salt, sugar, coffee, commodities. Yeah,
the commodity sweet. We gotta do tea. We haven't done tea, okay,
(12:12):
and wine we still haven't done wine. Yet. Yeah. That
one that just bugs me that we've got a great
offer from a nice guy. I don't have his name
in my memory, but I have his email in a safholder. Yeah,
and he was like, you need some help with this stuff.
I've got experts. We're ready to talk to you about wine.
That could that should be a sweet That's a dense,
dense topic. All right, so sugar beets, let's talk about
(12:36):
that in the process. Um, usually they're gonna extract over
the winter months between September and February. And as we
said earlier, sugar beat is about seventeen percent sugar. Yeah,
so not too bad bang for your buck wise, you know,
I mean considering the cane is only ten percent. Yeah,
I mean you could pick it up and eat it
(12:56):
and be like, this is pretty sweet. Oh yeah, seven,
I guess seventeen percent it And if you're in Russia
you could That's true. That's their racist pieces sugar beets.
Uh in a starting international incident. No things are tense
right now, you know, Yeah, between US and in Russia. Yeah,
it's like nineteen seventies seven. Again, Well, they kicking us
(13:18):
out of the space station. I know. Star Wars just
came out. Uh. So, if you're gonna process sugar beet,
you're gonna slice it and you're gonna put it in
hot water and you're gonna boil it, and it's similar
to sugarcane. They're gonna make a sugary juice. Then they're
gonna filter it, purify it, concentrate it, isolate those sugars,
(13:39):
and eventually you're gonna get sugar crystals developing because you
send that syrupy juice through what's called a centrifuge, and
that's going to separate the crystal from what is known
as the mother liquor whatever is left which is one
of my favorite terms. Now, when whatever is left over
that's not crystal is mother liquor like byproducts and the
(14:00):
original juice. And apparently that can be uh extracted a
few times, I would guess, so to get all the
crystals out of it. Yeah, and I think sometimes they
need to add a little sugar dust to spur that crystallization. Wow,
it sounds like a magical process. It was mother liquor.
There's sugar dust, and actually know that you bring up
(14:21):
sugar dusts, you know, do you remember down in Savannah
like two thousand seven eight, that's sugar refinery that exploded.
It was sugar that exploded in the air. Yeah, sugar
dust is particular matter, and when it gets into the air,
it can catch fire and explode. And it did. It
blew that place sky high. Yeah. When was that? I
(14:45):
wrote about it when I got here, so I would
guess like two thousand seven or two thousand and eight.
What was the article like, how can sugar explode? I
think I remember seeing that. We should have touched on that.
I guess we just did. But I mean, like you
you go back and check out that now that you
realize that it was just sugar. Yeah, that blew that
place up. It it formed a crater. Basically, it just
(15:09):
blew the whole refiner. Any flour could do that too, right,
same principle. Yeah, any particulate matter I can do that.
I think can it's nutty? Yeah? Um, alright, So sugarcane
is a very similar process. They're gonna pulverize the stalk um,
add water and lime and that's going to be your
syrupy sweet juice and not lime like limestone. Yeah, not
(15:32):
like squeeze limes into it. I had to double check, No,
you're right, because it's tropical, you know exactly. Uh, And
they're also going to run that through this interfuge, and
you're gonna get your mother liquor in your crystals, and
that is also going to be washed and filtered and
refined further until you get your sugary white goodness. You know.
Evaporations going on. It's it's it's one of those things
(15:55):
that sounds complicated, but it's actually pretty simple. It's the
same as when you're like making a simple syrup at home.
You're boiling sugar and water. It evaporates off, and you're
gonna end up with something super sweet. So chuck their
byproducts to this whole process. Essentially, molasses is chief among them. Yeah,
I never knew that. Yeah, it's a byproduct that comes
(16:17):
from boiling sugar. Right, Yeah, I mean it's it's basically
the Yeah, it's it's it's the dark like that. That's
what makes brown sugar dark or sugar in the raw
dark is molasses. Right. The molasses isn't extracted as much
as it is with refined white sugar. It's fine. White
(16:37):
sugar has zero molasses in it, like sugar in the
raw has more and more, it's less refined um. And
then the greatest byproduct of molasses is of course rum.
Yeah yeah, I put a little molasses in my when
I make melin barbecue sauce. Oh yeah that's good. Yeah,
that's nice. Another byproduct is called bagas, and that is um,
(16:59):
the pulp essentially of the cane. Are you making these
words up? No? Those are rewards. What mother looking in bagas?
But gas we I think another process we studied. It's
not it's not central just a sugar. It's just the
pulpy fibrous matter leftover from this kind of process. I
wonder what we talked about that and was it? Was
(17:21):
it coffee? Now maybe maybe maybe? But the ba gas
is used a big gas because I think I remembers
discussing whether it was a big gass or by gas.
It's bagas I listened to it today. Um yeah, we
definitely cover that before. I'm starting to feel like an
old man because when you when we have seven under
topics or so oh yeah, like literally vaguely familiar. But yeah,
(17:44):
I want to sound dumb, so you don't say anything
and they just spend the next week and your head
going over this. I'm telling you one day we were
going to rerecord a show and not realize it, man,
and we're going to hear about it. Well, what was it?
It was still skulls. You know, we never release that one, right,
But remember I was like, I thought for sure we
(18:05):
recorded this, no dreams. What it was. We went to
record dreams and we just were it just wasn't there. Yeah.
So but gas we definitely talked about. And the gas
is a great byproduct because that can be used to
power the sugar refinery. They actually burned that as fuel
(18:26):
to create the steam used to power some of these machines.
So that is one way that sugar production can be green. Um. However,
mass production of anything like this isn't super green because
they're transporting stuff over large distances and there's clear cutting
of land. Well that's a big one with with sugar. Yeah,
deforestation like in the Amazon, right and yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah.
(18:47):
So even though they're using things like the gas as
a byproduct to help power why is that funny? Because
I always hear by gas in my head okay anytime
you say it. But is not a looked upon as
one of the more green products that is used and produced,
like they have to use baby lambs to really refine
(19:09):
it to its whitest. Not true, Well, it uses their
souls at least, I guess, if you want to get technical,
the souls of baby lambs, and then they're just left
to wander the earth for the rest of their natural lives,
like not feeling anything. So there's a lot of types
(19:49):
of sugar. There are. Um, when you think about sugar,
especially here in the West, you think, oh, that really white,
like really pretty powdery granular stuff, and that's called table sugar,
and that's what's known as sucros. That's right, And sucros
is glucose and fruit toast sucros also apparently occurs naturally.
(20:11):
But there's a lot of different types of sugar that
you're gonna find in plants, uh, and from some animals too. Yeah. Yeah,
So cow's milk contains lactose and gullactose, both of which
are sugars um sucros. Again, that's typically table sugar, but
(20:32):
I believe you can find that in plants, and that's
glucose and fructose, like you said, yeah, and it's even
one molecule glucose, one molecule fruit toast put them together,
you've got sucros fruit toast is commonly found in fruits. Yeah. Uh,
it's also found in honey fruit toastes. And then um, glucose.
(20:54):
This is the one you commonly think of when you
think the body and sugar, because gluco us is what
the body runs on. And we'll talk about that a
little more in depth than a little bit. Yeah, and
that's in honey and fruits and veggies. And then something
called zylos, which I've never heard of, that's in wood
and straw. It's pretty interesting. Yeah, there's a sugar alcohol
(21:15):
called zilattle. Yeah, that's very sweet. Yeah. There's sugar alcohols
and they supposedly um circumvent your blood sugar, your normal
metabolic blood sugar process, so they taste sweet but they
don't have any impact on your blood sugar. And one
of them is called zio Litle zioltle, and that's the
(21:35):
name of the product. Yeah. There's this uh Danish or
Swedish gum that's like the best sugar free gum you
can possibly get your hands on. It's called Ziolidle. This
is so good. Terrible name though it is, but it's
named after the sugar, which apparently is based on I
guess it's probably would sugar alcohol. Wow, yeah, it's pretty creative.
(22:00):
I didn't. I'm just recounting here, so I know I
didn't know. You didn't You weren't complimenting me. Uh. Sugar
comes in different granulations and from icing sugar, which is
if you've ever heard of confection or sugar that you
daintily sprinkle on top of your Um what's it called?
(22:20):
What did you get at the fair? Your funnel cake?
Those are so good? They are I haven't had one
year or so. Yeah, they're good. I never like I got.
I don't indulge in that stuff. Man, what why is
going on? Chuck? Well, you know, I'm I'm overweight and
like it's there's just like you don't want to be
the overweight guy walking up to the funnel cake stand,
you know, Well that's why you sneak around the back,
(22:42):
get someone else to go get it, and you eat
in the alley. Cry. I've never done that. No, I
avoid that stuff. Ice Cream is my big downfall. Oh
it's your ice cream? What's your favorite? Um? Well, Ben
and Jerry's like, but which one? Chubby hubb Oh that's
a good one. Ironically. Yeah, Um, I gotta tell you.
(23:04):
Have you had Bluebell? Yeah? Okay? Blue Bell is like
the third best selling ice cream brand country, But you
can only get it in like seven states, that's how
good it is. And um, they have a banana pudding
flavor that is if you're in Nevada and you can't,
(23:25):
the closest you can get it is in Mississippi. It's
worth driving there for and it's like eight bucks for
like a gallon or a half gallons, ridiculously expensive, but
it is so good. All of their flavors are good,
but their banana putting one is like it's just I'm
about to cry. Yeah there. Um, their radio commercials or
have you heard those? The songs are horrible. Oh it's
(23:47):
the funniest stuff you've ever heard. The TV version of
it is even worse. Yeah, it seems like a joke,
Like are they serious or is this campy? Oh? They're serious.
It's like an eighty five year old like braptist preachers
and are you do like their ads? It's it is.
It's campy. It's so it's and they don't mean it.
It is For those of you who don't know the songs.
(24:09):
It's literally like, you know, mama's baking the apple pie
and putting in the window sill and like the picket
fences outside, and we're eating bluebell ice cream because it
tastes like the good old days. It's really funny. It
rhymes more than that, but that's just it. I'm sure
it's on YouTube just type blue belt ice cream. Man, Yeah,
it's good stuff. Um Man. That was a nice sidetrack.
(24:31):
So then you got castor sugar, which is larger than
powdered sugar but smaller than granulated sugar. Yeah, which I
didn't know about until like a couple of months ago.
I don't remember what recipe it was, but there was
a recipe that you me was making that like called
for castor sugar. She was like what both of us were, Yeah,
you apparently you can make it if like with the
coffee grinder, you can grind your regular sugar. Yes, she
(24:51):
came across that. I think you finally founder she ordered
it online or something like that. But she's making a
meringue because they used a lot of morangue. Ex Evidently
I don't remember, maybe I don't remember what did she
need that for? I'll figure it out on my own
time and let everybody know in the next episode. How
(25:12):
about that, rather than all of us sitting here until
I remember what the recipes and then I pick up
the phone and collar and asked, right, that's good radio,
my friend. Uh. Then you have your granulated sugar, and
this is your table sugar. And then you've got preserving sugar,
which looks sort of like sort of rock salty. It's
chunkier or like sea salt, right course, sea salt sweeter
than sea salt though, and that's used to preserve yes,
(25:34):
much sweeter. Uh. Yeah, because that's another property of sugar
is it's a preservative as well. Um, you can throw
it into some jam if you want to make an
extra sweet, but it'll also keep the bacteria away at bay,
that's right, which is why, like you said, simple syrup
can last for so long. Yeah, you can just make
(25:56):
that and put it on your bar at riom temperature. Right. Yeah,
I'm keep it in the but you you keep it
on hand, make it yourself. It's very easy. Plus also,
if you like toss some lavender in there, got lavender
simple syrup which goes with anything with gin in it. Yeah, Oh,
it's so good. Um. You can put in some like
(26:17):
all spice and some an a seed and stuff like that.
Lemon verbina, No, but I have made lemon like just
from the the peel. Oh yeah. Lemon verbena is like
just the green leaf. We grow a lot of that
in the herb garden and if you smash it up,
it smells so good, like I imagine it would be
good muddled in a drink if I was into that.
(26:38):
Are you not? You know that I'm not into the cocktails.
I thought you were whiskey over ice. So you can
jazz it up a little bit here there, No, not me. Okay.
Uh So I guess we should talk a little bit
about high fruit dost corn syrup. We did a whole
show on it, yeah, which you can go back and
listen to. But it bears mentioning here because there's a
lot of it gets a bad rap um and the
(27:02):
evidence is sort of inconclusive right now. Yeah, yeah, I
think what we determined is it's not necessarily any worse
feed than sugar, but it's in a lot more stuff
and you may not know it. I don't remember what
we concluded. What my understanding is at this point, and
that was from two thousand nine. UM, there's a really
great article on the New York Times called It's Sugar Toxic.
(27:24):
It's very long, but it's very in depth, and it
really goes into the um the evidence that's out there
that it really is the highlights. Well, like you said,
high fruit toast corn syrup isn't molecularly different very much
from sucrose, which is sugar. Most high fruit toast corn
(27:45):
syrup or the stuff that's most widely used, is like
fruit toast to glucoast, So that five difference UM and
fruit toast shouldn't make much difference, but apparently it does.
The other aspect of high frue toast corn syrup is
that that extra fructoast are all that fruit toast that
(28:09):
is processed in the liver. Any cell in your body
can process glucose. When you eat something that has glucose
in it, UH, your pancreas releases insulin, and insulin goes
hey open up cells and the glucose goes in and
it's converted. It's biochemical energy is converted to a t
P and then you have this packet of energy that
(28:29):
can be used by any cell any cell can do that,
which means your entire body can metabolize glucose. Fructoast has
to be broken down into glucose, and that's done in
the liver. The liver has some options to it chuck
when it's presented with fruit toast. It can use it
(28:49):
for energy, it can convert it into fats in the
blood stream, which are called triglycerides, or it can convert
it into fat stores fat. Yeah right, that's if you
have too much of it, right, yeah. Now, with high
fruc toast corn syrup, apparently evidence shows that when it
(29:10):
hits the liver, it's just automatically converted to fat, and
that the speed with which it's metabolized also has an
effect on how much or how frequently it's converted to fat.
And with high fruit toast corn syrup, it's syrup, and
syrup apparently hits the liver a lot faster than say,
(29:32):
an equal amount of apples that you're getting fruit toast from,
so it's being converted to fat like automatically. That's why
they think that high fruit toast corn syrup is actually
far worse from you than just regular fruit toast or
even sucros table sugar. Right, while the obesity epidemic is
sort of matched year to year with the introduction of
(29:54):
high fruit toast corn syrup as far as increase um.
So that makes sense. I read an article today that
said that added sugars overall is the problem, whether it's
high frec dose corn syrup or regular added sugar. Well,
that's added sugars in a product. That's the U s
d a's line, and the U s d A doesn't
(30:15):
want to upset the sugar industry or the Cornerfiners Association,
So that's kind of become the predominant government line, like, yeah,
everybody's eating too much sugar, that's the problem. Well, then
there's a whole group of people out there who are saying, like, no,
it's it's yeah, sure that's a problem, but this is
a an even bigger problem with high fructose corn syrup. Yeah,
(30:36):
that makes sense that it's different and it's affecting people differently, right,
and it's not the same as sugar. Well, I think
a lot of people think we're ingesting too much corn
based products. Period. We need to do GMOs at some
point too, you know. Yeah, everyone keeps calling for it.
Some guys send us a book. Yeah yeah, oh yeah, yeah.
(31:00):
Did you read it? No, I haven't read it. Um.
Apparently six of americans calories come from added sugars, which
is just like totally empty calories. So again there's a
there's a big there's an argument over those numbers. Yeah. Sure,
no one really knows, but supposedly the numbers are very
(31:21):
artificially low. Um. And that the average American eats about
ninety five pounds of sugar a year. Oh yeah yeah wow,
and the global average is something like, um sixty six pounds.
But Israel eats something like a hundred and forty five
pounds per person per year. What what that's from sweets? Yeah,
(31:46):
they eat a lot of sugar package foods. Um. Are
we done with HFCs then for now? Yeah? I go
back and listen to the episode. It was a good one,
one of my favorites. Yeah, it's been a while. I'm
to re listen to that, but I didn't get a chance. Um,
(32:25):
So sugar in the body, we've been this also a
hearkens back to our episode on taste it uh corresponds
molecularly on your with your taste buds on the tongue
because of the shape of the molecule. We talked about
that the molecules are shaped to fit. You know, when
sugar hits it, it matches up perfectly with that molecule
and sends a message said, hey, there's something sweet as
(32:46):
opposed to salty or bitter or sour or umami. Fi right,
this say is four and then names five, which I
thought was I even changed it on my sheet. Um.
And they reckon in something that I do not recommend,
which is uh, if something tastes sweet in the wild,
(33:07):
it's more likely to be safe to eat than something bitter.
It's sort of true. But you should never ever go
and like in a survival scenario and just try and
eat something even a little bit. Um. There's a test
you can do which I won't get into, but it
involves like rubbing on your skin first, waiting a certain
amount of time. They may be touching it to your tongue,
(33:27):
waiting a certain amount of time. But you should never
just go like, I wonder if this is edible, let
me taste it? Right, It's not a good idea good
going even if it is sweet. You're a survivalist. I
know some things, so you know, we said sugar is
found in all plants, just to varying degrees. UM and
plants create sugar is a byproduct of photosynthesis, and they
(33:49):
use it for energy for growth. They also use it
to They take sugars and turn them into more complex
sugars to use for like um sell you their structure
like cellulose um. But they also use sugar in their
nectar to attract bees and other things to help them pollinate. Yeah,
(34:11):
and and propagate their species because it's sweet stuff. Yeah.
I love it when I see the little bee getting
in there getting a little something sweet. Yeah, I feel
like they're getting a little treat, you know, that's right,
And then they're vomiting it up and we eat it
as honey. That's true. Uh, sugar is bad for your teeth.
Everyone knows that. Um specifically, when you eat sugar, it's
(34:35):
gonna form something called a glyco protein, that little sweater
on your teeth. And bacteria love to eat that stuff
and then they love to poop out lactic acid afterwards,
unto your teeth. Yes, specifically stripped a caucus mutans, that's
the culprit for cavities. We've said stripped a caucus before
and that's not a good word. No, but there's different
(34:57):
kinds of strap. Okay um. But when they p about
that lactic acid, that's what's on your enamel, that's what's
gonna wear it on your teeth. So eating sugary stuff
really is bad for your teeth. That's not like something
your mom tells you. That's a lie. And the bacteria
also provide or produces a biofilm around all of this
stuff which traps it in there and traps in the
lactic acid as well. So you're in trouble. Yeah, you're dead,
(35:22):
not dead, but you make it diabetes. Yeah, you can
get diabetes um from too much sugar and that that
apparently is um. It's crazy that there's a real parallel
between the six country study in the seven country study
that we talked about in the Paleo Diet episode of fats,
apparently there was a rival all along that said it's
(35:46):
not fat, it's sugar. Like we're both after the same problem.
But this guy went after fats, this other guy went
after sugar. And now they're starting to think, like now
that they're thinking it's not fats after all, that contributed
to like heart disease and obesity that they think is
actually sugar, and the the way that it's sugar is
through something called metabolic syndrome, to where if you eat
(36:09):
too much sugar, your body becomes resistant to insulin. And
remember insulin gets glucose out of the blood stream and
into your cells and is converted to energy. Well, if
your body starts sucking at doing that, then you have
a lot more glucose in your blood stream, which means
you're pancreases producing more and more insulin. Insulin remember, triggers
fat storage, So you have more and more insulin, you
(36:32):
have more and more fat storage, you have obesity, you
have heart disease, and they think that possibly the number
one contributor to heart attacks is metabolic syndrome and not
necessarily saturated fats. Right. Interesting, But as a result of
this aside result is insulin, you develop your diabetes. Type
(36:53):
two diabetes is the result of insulin resistance where you
have to inject insulin into your body because your body
is not producing enough any longer because it's overtaxed your pancreases. Yeah,
we got a lot of great responses from the Paleo episode.
It was a really interesting one. Yeah, and people saying, like, dudes,
we know so little still about nutrition, and things are
(37:15):
changing so much with the things we eat and put
in our body that it's hard to keep up, which
is why it's so insulting when some industry that has
a vested interest in so they got all figured out. Yeah,
and don't worry about it, just keep eating it. You
know that that's that's insulting. All right, Can sugar power
your car? Yes? How I'll explain. There's a couple of ways. Um,
(37:38):
So there's sugar based ethanol, which Brazil was basically running
on for many years. I didn't realize that they're big
into flex fuels and ethanol. They were basically energy independent
in the first decade of the twenty one century because
they said, we're tired of being dependent on foreign oil. Yeah,
(37:59):
let's figure or something out. And they did. They put
all they Yeah, they started looking into sugarcane, making ethanol
from sugarcane, and you know there's like corn based ethanol,
which um, Chris Pallette and I talked about in the
Grass Lena episode, remember that. And apparently ethanol made from
sugarcane as eight hundred times more energy output. And so
(38:23):
they were making ethanol in it. In two thousand eight
of the fuel sold in Brazil was ethanol made from
sugarcane right there in the country. Well, then gas prices
lowered and UM people started using gas again because they'll
use whatever's cheapest. But Brazil, even though it's on its heels,
(38:43):
the ethanol industry there is they proved it's a completely
viable alternative fuel. Yeah. The problem though, again with UM
refining more and more sugar for these purposes is the
deforestation and worker wages. And I feel like anytime we've
covered any commodity like this, there's some workers somewhere in
(39:04):
the world getting screwed over, and sugar is definitely not
any stranger in that process. Well. Also it drives up
food prices too, yeah, UM, because if if there's two
different huge sectors competing for the same commodity like there,
it's going to drive the price of that commodity up. Yeah,
that's true. So if you have energy and food right
going after sugar prices, sugar goes up, right. I wish
(39:27):
people could have seen that demonstration. He really brings it home. Uh.
And what else is the other I remember, I think
we talked about this too. Uh, sugar devouring microorganisms basically
feeding on sugar and making energy in the process. Yeah,
that's a like viable, viable way in the future maybe
to power things. Yeah, so there's a certain certain types
(39:49):
of microbes are more sugar hungry than others. Yeah. But yeah,
when they're eating sugar, they managed to separate electrons and
loosen loosen electrons, and as the electrons flow, as we
mentioned in our electricity episode, the flow of electrons is electricity.
So if you direct that flow across like some something
(40:10):
that can use it, you create a current. And the
cool thing about microbial fuel cells is when that electron
makes it to the other side, it um combines to
form water. So that's the byproduct like this. So it
it truly is a very um environmentally friendly alternative fuel. Yeah,
(40:30):
we did. We covered that at some point too. I remember,
it's our world is getting smaller because we're explaining it.
That's right. You got anything else? No, I don't think so, mother, liquor,
the gas, all these words I made up just for
the show. You did good with the making up the words, man, Thanks. Yeah,
(40:53):
I don't have anything else, chuck um. But if you
want to learn more about sugar. I'm sure there's some
words we left out of this article. You can type
sugar into the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
And uh, since I said search bar, it's time for
a listener mail. I'm gonna call this refuting listener mail.
(41:15):
We read a listener mail from a creationist not too
long ago, man that got a certain response from some quarters. Yeah,
so then a lot of people right in responding to
that listener mail. So we might just continue this for
the next year just reading rebuttals. H Hey, guys, you
received an email from a creation that's explaining that both
creationists and scientists believe in natural selection, and that both
(41:37):
groups believe in micro evolution but disagree on macro evolution.
What the person did not mention is that macro and
micro evolution describe the same process of natural selection, just
on different timetables. Uh, micro a short term, macros long term.
It simply does not make sense that natural selection works
on the short term, but it's somehow reversed on the
long term. Natural selection introduces changes to population subgroup as
(42:01):
they adapt to their environment, but the changes are small.
The population subgroup can naturally breed with the original population
that is micro revolution. Once it changes are significant enough
that the subgroup can no longer naturally and successfully breed
with the parent population, the subgroup is considered a new species.
That's a special event, that it's macro evolution. To believe
(42:22):
in micro and not macro is to ignore how nature works.
Say you put two separate populations of the same species
put in very different environments. Each population would slowly adapt
to its new environment and change over time micro evolution,
each group will become better adapted to its new environment,
and the differences between the two groups will only grow
(42:42):
in time. However, if you don't believe in macro revolution,
you don't believe in new species. So you have to
believe that no matter how different each group becomes, nature
does not work like this. Also, the previous writer claimed
to be a creationist botanist, and that is like a
doctor does not believe in germ theory. I'm sure they
might exist, but I would definitely take their expertise with
(43:05):
a large dose of salt. Quite a rebuttal. Yeah, and
I didn't have a name. I feel bad, so I'm
just I'm gonna say thanks you, Thanks Richard Dawkins. I
appreciate that so the evolutionists have rebutted, what say you creationists?
Let us know? And everybody stopped tweeting and sending emails
(43:27):
about how dare we put a creationists views on and
listener mail? Yeah. Yeah, there's no way to go through
life trying to silence your opponents. Yeah, your debate and engage.
I was surprised there were a lot of people that
said you shouldn't give equal time to this stuff because
it's just not true. Yeah. Somebody said, Um, I thought
(43:48):
discovery stood for something interesting. Yeah, well, hey, I think
debate is healthy and they think you're not right either,
So like you know, yep, debate is healthy. Chuck exactly. Um.
If not, Bill and I wouldn't have done it, boom.
(44:09):
If you want to contribute to the debate, we want
to hear from you. You can tweet to us at
s y SK podcast. You can join us on Facebook
dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know, send us an
email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com,
and as always, check us out at our home on
the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. Stuff you
Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff
(44:30):
Works for more podcasts for my Heart Radio Because at
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