4,000 years ago, Chinese mastered the technology of boiling sugar. Before the Spring Festival, there is a custom "twenty-three, sugar melon sticky", and the festival related to this sweet feeling has been passed down to the present.
For example, on the twenty-third day of the lunar month, which is the small year in the north, every family must sacrifice the stove and offer the round "sugar melon" to the king of the stove to stick his mouth and let him "go to heaven to say good things and go down to the earth to ensure peace." After the sacrifice, these "sugar melons" naturally entered the stomach.
(Sugar Melon)
In the Tohoku provinces, in order to facilitate storage, the maltose used for sacrificial stoves is pulled into long strips, called "Kanto sugar". In the south where the twenty-fourth day of the lunar month is the small year, Jiangxi folk have a saying of "small year and small year, popcorn is sweet", people use maltose and popcorn to make popcorn candy, which means sweet and sweet in the new year.
Nowadays, sugar has long become the most common taste, because it will stimulate the human body to produce pleasant dopamine, people's love for sweets can be said to come from the soul, but this has also led to the spread of obesity, high blood pressure and other chronic diseases around the world because of excessive sugar intake.
After the holidays, can you eat sugar casually? Or, how to eat sugar is healthier?
(Candy)
We are much more nourished today than the ancients. We've reduced our heavy physical work, our diets have become more elaborate, and sugar that was once expensive has become cheaper. However, this has led to excessive sugar intake in modern people, and there is evidence that modern people's high-sugar, high-fat diet and low physical activity are closely related to the occurrence of overweight, hypertension, dyslipidemia and other diseases [1].
WHO recommends that adults consume no more than 25 grams of added sugars per day, which is about 5 semicubes. What is this concept? A bottle of cola is 500 ml, and the sugar content is a full 53 grams, which is equivalent to nearly 12 sugar cubes, which is more than twice the limit of added sugar.
The component of added sugars is sucrose, a disaccharide combining glucose and fructose, which has little nutritional value except to provide energy. Therefore, foods containing a lot of added sugar, such as sugary drinks and cream cakes, generally have their own high energy density properties.
People who like to eat these foods are most likely to consume more energy and carbohydrates than the body needs, and the excess part will be converted into fat by the body and stored under the skin and around the internal organs. This is the most fundamental reason why excessive sugar consumption causes overweight or obesity.
Some people may ask, is the occurrence of diabetes caused by eating sugar?
In fact, eating sugar does not directly cause diabetes. Diabetes is caused by insufficient insulin secretion of the hormone responsible for lowering blood sugar, or the body's inability to use insulin smoothly.
However, this does not mean that added sugar is innocent: it may indirectly cause diabetes. As we said just now, people who love sweets and sugary drinks are prone to fat. Overweight can crush insulin-producing organs and destroy our ability to use insulin. If it is allowed to develop, diabetes will quietly visit [2].
Therefore, whether for ordinary healthy people or diabetics, strict control of added sugar intake is a necessary condition for preventing diseases, controlling the course of diseases, and ensuring health.
The "sugar" we usually refer to should be called sweeteners, that is, additives with sweetness added to food. Most of today's sweeteners are actually traditional sucrose.
Most people can't resist sweets. And diabetics are deterred when faced with sweets. They desperately need a new sweetener that satisfies their love of sweetness without harming their health. So functional sugars came into being.
(The sweetener in chewing gum is xylitol)
Functional sugar is a sweetener with special functions or uses, which can replace traditional sugar and is mostly prepared from substances such as corn cobs. Commonly used functional sugars include functional oligosaccharides, functional sugar alcohols, functional dietary fiber and other low-grade polymeric sugars. The "xylitol" we often hear is functional sugars, in addition to fructo-oligosaccharides, soy oligosaccharides, xylo-oligosaccharides, etc. [3].
Functional sugars are difficult to be absorbed by the body, and the energy provided is very low or zero, which is to maximize the satisfaction of those who love desserts but are worried about affecting their health.
If you really want to make a change, you may wish to eat some sugar-free products with functional sugar as sweeteners as an alternative, which can be enjoyed and taken care of your body!