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