David Hare-Scott wrote:
Frank wrote:

High fructose corn syrup is something else but is functionally
identical to sucrose when put in the high acid environment of sodas.

Please explain this matter of "functionally identical".

Glucose is less sweet calorie for calorie than sucrose. Fructose is
more sweet calories for calorie than sucrose. HFCS is a 55-45% mixture
of the two to make it calorie for calorie as sweet as sucrose.

There are studies that show that calorie for calorie HFCS is worse for
you than sucrose. Decades of overuse of any type of sugar is one of the
causes of the current epidemics of obesity and diabetes. Replacing HFCS
with sucrose may be of tiny benefit but better still is reducing the
total amount of any type of sugar in food.

For someone who's never been fat and who does not have any diabetic
relatives, the density of sugar in bananas, dates and pineapples is not
a problem. For the rest of us we really need to keep our sugar intakes
below that.

My own experimentation sees if I avoid anything sweeter than about a
peach or pear, starchier than about a rutabagas or sweet potato I do
not gain weight. Huh, eating natural food is beneficial to me. Go
figure.