{"id":1583,"date":"2019-06-12T19:22:29","date_gmt":"2019-06-13T02:22:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/?p=1583"},"modified":"2025-04-25T16:59:24","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T23:59:24","slug":"sweet-talk-types-of-sugar-in-your-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/2019\/06\/12\/sweet-talk-types-of-sugar-in-your-food\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweet Talk \u2013 Types of Sugar in your Food"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sheila Kun RN, BSN, MS, CPN, FCCP<\/strong><\/p>\n

As we are paying more attention to the increase in incidences of obesity and diabetes, we often focus on what we should eat, namely, how much \u201csugar and carbohydrates<\/strong>\u201d is not considered excessive. I thought we might want to understand the many faces of sugar and how that relates to carbohydrates in the upcoming weeks.<\/p>\n

*Scientifically, sugar<\/em> loosely refers to a number of carbohydrates; “simple sugars,” the most important being glucose and complex sugars. Complex sugars contain three or more units of sugar<\/strong>. As sugar is a carbohydrate, complex sugars are often referred to as complex carbohydrates, although this term encompasses other items including starches. This week, we will examine only the simple and complex sugars.<\/p>\n

Fructose, galactose, and glucose are all simple sugars.<\/p>\n

Fructose<\/strong><\/a>, or fruit sugar, occurs naturally in fruits, some root vegetables, cane sugar and honey and is the sweetest of the sugars. It is one of the components of sucrose or table sugar. It is used as a high-fructose syrup<\/a>, which is manufactured from hydrolyzed corn starch that has been processed to yield corn syrup<\/a>, with enzymes then added to convert part of the glucose into fructose.<\/p>\n