Three minutes to talk about popular science
Is it true that eating sugar is bad for your health?
That's true in general, but it can't be generalized. In some cases, eating sugar can indeed quickly replenish the body's energy, but for the average person, it is true that you should not eat too much sugar, because it means tooth decay, obesity and accelerated aging. Of course, the sugar here refers mainly to added sugar. What is added sugar? Generally, it is monosaccharides and disaccharides. Let's talk about monosaccharides first, monosaccharides are the simplest sugars in structure, after entering the human body, they only need to interact with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide, water and adenosine triphosphate, so as to quickly replenish energy for the body, and the main representative of monosaccharides is glucose, in addition to fructose and galactose are monosaccharides.
Next is the disaccharide, which is actually formed by combining two monosaccharides together and removing a water molecule.
After entering the body, disaccharides are first hydrolyzed into simple sugars and then converted into energy. Take sucrose, which we are most familiar with, for example, after it enters the human body, it will be hydrolyzed into glucose and fructose, and in addition to sucrose, typical disaccharides include maltose and lactose. It can be seen that there is no difference between the sucrose, rock sugar, brown sugar, etc. we eat every day, and after entering the human body, they will eventually end up in the same way and be converted into energy, but the way of transformation and the time of transformation are slightly different.
If there is no benefit to eating sugar, why do we still like it so much?
It's all genes. The biggest advantage of sugar is that it can quickly replenish energy in large quantities, and the ancestors of human beings had very difficult access to food during the years of fighting against nature, so sugar is very precious, so they have developed the habit of "eating sweet". Now our material resources are very abundant, but the gene of "sweetness" has not disappeared, which makes us very entangled. In fact, there is no need to be distressed, if you want to get the happiness brought by "sweetness", and you don't want to affect your health due to eating too much sugar, then find something else to replace it.
Something that can replace sugar is naturally a sugar substitute.
Sugar substitutes can also be divided into two categories, one is sugar alcohols, which mainly include xylitol, which we are most familiar with, as well as sorbitol and erythritol. Sugar alcohol is a high-quality sugar substitute, sweet and has no harm to the body, but eating too much can cause diarrhea. Another type of sugar substitute is chemicals with a sweet taste, such as aspartame, sucralose, etc., these chemicals are very sweet, can reach hundreds of times that of ordinary sucrose, and should be strictly limited when applied to food. In addition to what we have said above, there is actually a special member of the "sugar family" that satisfies our appetites and is good for health, and it is fructooligosaccharides.
Fructooligosaccharides are functional oligosaccharides that belong to prebiotics.
Although its sweetness is not very high, only 30% to 60% of ordinary sucrose, it is really "good sugar". After fructooligosaccharides enter the human body, they will not be absorbed by the human digestive system, and they will not be broken down into small molecule monosaccharides such as glucose, so they will not cause blood sugar to rise. Although the human body does not absorb fructooligosaccharides, the beneficial bacteria in the human intestine have a soft spot for them, such as bifidobacteria and lactobacillus, which can effectively use fructooligosaccharides to promote their own proliferation.
The proliferation of beneficial bacteria in the intestine can objectively inhibit the production of harmful bacteria, so as to achieve the purpose of resisting pathogenic bacterial infection, that is to say, taking fructooligosaccharides can improve the body's disease resistance to a certain extent.
In addition, fructooligosaccharides are a kind of water-soluble dietary fiber, so they can not only promote intestinal peristalsis, but also help control blood lipids. Having said all this, can we come into contact with fructooligosaccharides on a daily basis? Of course, fructooligosaccharides are widely found in all kinds of vegetables and fruits, such as onions, green onions, garlic in the fructooligosaccharide content is very rich, and among fruits, the fructooligosaccharide content of bananas is far ahead.