Speaker 1: Hi friends. Sugar is delicious and it is also not
Speaker 1: very good for you. And we did an episode on
Speaker 1: Sugar from June Sugar Colon. It powers the Earth and
Speaker 1: it truly does. It's a lot to this one. We
Speaker 1: probably get it done a two parter, but we shrunk
Speaker 1: it down into one episode, as we try to do.
Speaker 1: And here we go with Sugar right now. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff You should know, a production of I Heart Radios.
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles Chuck Bryant. How dye uh high
Speaker 1: sugar Dune, dun dune. That's a I was thinking about
Speaker 1: the earlier at the Archies. That was an archie song.
Speaker 1: Oh sugar, honey, honey, dude, dude. See you called Pete
Speaker 1: your girlfriend like a sugar or honey or your wife
Speaker 1: or whatever, and it's those are all sweet things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that all makes sense. Did you get your head? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean you wouldn't call you call your wife something bitter,
Speaker 1: right like um like Korean melon. I was trying to
Speaker 1: think of something bitter. I couldn't think of anything. Come here,
Speaker 1: my little Korean melon. I bet someone said that. Who
Speaker 1: I don't know someone Korean, No, and Korea they just
Speaker 1: call him melons. That's true. Man, this is the worst
Speaker 1: start ever. This is the worst ever. I knew we
Speaker 1: would achieve it. We've been building towards well. We top
Speaker 1: ourselves every episode. Really, that's right, um Chuck, Yes, have
Speaker 1: you ever tasted sugar? I have. I'm trying to bring
Speaker 1: it 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 in 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, yeah, and going like this
Speaker 1: is the jam, sweet and yummy and sweet energy, and
Speaker 1: it makes us fat. Remember that Simpsons where we're I
Speaker 1: guess Bart grows up to be like a paid taste
Speaker 1: tester and like he drinks that soda and like turns
Speaker 1: into like this horrible, huge, disfigured thing and he goes
Speaker 1: sweet and the guy with the clipboard goes pleasing taste
Speaker 1: some monsterism you remember, I don't remember that it was great?
Speaker 1: Was that the one where they was there all of
Speaker 1: their future selves. No, it was like just a momentary
Speaker 1: day dream and it goes back to like his normal
Speaker 1: self and he's like cool, like he can't wait to
Speaker 1: grow up to be a professional taste. You know the
Speaker 1: table reading he 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 we 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 Apparently island hopped from New Guinea across Polynesia,
Speaker 1: made its way up to Indonesia and then finally landed
Speaker 1: in India. And when it was in India, it really
Speaker 1: started to spread. Everything spread from India back then trade
Speaker 1: routes and thanks to the Crusades, it was brought to
Speaker 1: Western Europe. Well even before that, the Persians started conquering
Speaker 1: the land and they encountered sugar and brought that with them,
Speaker 1: that's right. And then you got Columbus, that jerk brought
Speaker 1: sugarcane itself to the Caribbean and said, you know, like
Speaker 1: some some roots samplings, and said, let's try and plant
Speaker 1: this stuff here. And it turned out it was a
Speaker 1: great place to plant sugarcane, It really was, because sugarcane
Speaker 1: is a tropical plant. Yeah, the cane, you can't grow
Speaker 1: it any just anywhere, but you can grow it in
Speaker 1: places like South America, the Caribbean, South Africa, southern United States,
Speaker 1: hot places, India, as we already mentioned. And it just
Speaker 1: kind of spread like wildfire across the world, especially once
Speaker 1: it came to what's known as the New World, like
Speaker 1: you said, via Columbus. Unfortunately, it also was and it
Speaker 1: became an agent of slavery, Yes, it certainly did. It
Speaker 1: fueled the slave trade for quite a while. Um and
Speaker 1: then by seventeen fifty there were a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: sugar refineries in Britain. They called it white gold, and uh,
Speaker 1: it was up until that point it had been kind
Speaker 1: of a luxury. Well a little before that it beat
Speaker 1: it became a little more widespread. It was a complete
Speaker 1: luxury like literally it was for royalty pretty much. It
Speaker 1: was so rare and hard to come by. Um. Apparently
Speaker 1: the first enter, the first Seaborn International Sugar Exchange was
Speaker 1: between Venice and England in thirteen nineteen. I saw that
Speaker 1: Venice was the first place where they were like refining
Speaker 1: it really well, right, and the Venetians where that was
Speaker 1: a merchant city if there ever was one. So they
Speaker 1: 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 a closure 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: And it actually led to a huge increase in tea consumption.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because before then people drank tea. But once
Speaker 1: they started putting sugar in their tea, they're like, we
Speaker 1: love tea, and that's when it became like the the
Speaker 1: national drink of Great Britain. Man, I love a good
Speaker 1: English tea with a little cream and little sugar in it.
Speaker 1: Just delicious. Your t guy, I like the Herby kind more. No,
Speaker 1: I like it all man. I love green tea, I
Speaker 1: love English breakfast tea. I love black tea. I'll even
Speaker 1: do a little I'll try it up every now and then.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm into all of it. That's a wild sidewalker, uh.
Speaker 1: And from about eighteen fifteen, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: warring going on in Europe and there were naval blockades
Speaker 1: by Britain that basically Europe needed that sugar fix and
Speaker 1: they were like, but you can't cut us off. We
Speaker 1: love sugar now. And so in seventeen forty seven, they
Speaker 1: realized that the sugar beat, which is the other way
Speaker 1: you can get sugar, was a great way to do it,
Speaker 1: and that's how they get their sugar today still. And
Speaker 1: the beat is um looks like a beat that's not purple.
Speaker 1: It's a root and it grows up out of the ground.
Speaker 1: Looks like a little uh, just sort of whitish, light brown. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sort of like a turnip. But it's sweet. It is
Speaker 1: about seventeen percent of the sugar beat is uh can
Speaker 1: eventually become sugar, as opposed to only about ten percent
Speaker 1: in the cane, which I thought was unusual. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you have these two plants that can be processed separately,
Speaker 1: independently and both will produce is sugar indistinguishable to the
Speaker 1: average person, pretty neat. And the reason why, chuck, the
Speaker 1: reason why that why it would be indistinguishable is because
Speaker 1: all plants have sugar. That's right. It's a carbohydrate, a
Speaker 1: simple carbohydrate, and um sugar is a part of photosynthesis.
Speaker 1: But you can't go out and get, you know, a
Speaker 1: blade of switch grass and get enough sugar out of
Speaker 1: it to make sugar, even though the sugar in it
Speaker 1: it's only abundant enough in the beet in the cane
Speaker 1: to really produce sugar. Sugar exactly, but sugars is kind
Speaker 1: of this um. It's it's a molecule that powers the earth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: really like humans, plants, everything gets is powered by sugar.
Speaker 1: It's pretty neat. It is pretty neat. Uh. It is
Speaker 1: also as a you can be use it as a preservative. Um.
Speaker 1: It prevents bacteria from growing in jam um. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: can change the texture. They use it as like a
Speaker 1: food additive to make something look and feel different, not
Speaker 1: only just taste different. They're like, this doesn't put fuzzy
Speaker 1: little jackets on people's teeth when they eat it. Enough,
Speaker 1: So let's add some sugar. And our favorite use of
Speaker 1: sugar is to make booze. Accelerates fermentation. And my favorite
Speaker 1: uses of sugar are to make booze and to make
Speaker 1: Reese's Pieces. Okay, let's not leave that out. It's a
Speaker 1: it's an important part of the production of alcohol and
Speaker 1: Reese's Pieces and Reese's Pieces, and it does make the
Speaker 1: world go round. And the world actually produces quite a
Speaker 1: bit of sugar. So in this article from a few
Speaker 1: years ago, it says that um the world made about
Speaker 1: seventy eight million tons. That's seventy one metric tons of
Speaker 1: sugarcane annually. Is that accurate? Still? Do you know? Well,
Speaker 1: it's just sugarcane. But I know that sugarcane accounts for
Speaker 1: eighty percent of sugar production about and then sugar beats
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. Okay, yeah, so I guess you'd have
Speaker 1: to be a mathematician to figure out that formula. But
Speaker 1: plus you probably have to have more info than weeds.
Speaker 1: This cave. The cane sugar cane looks sort of like bamboo,
Speaker 1: the stock does. It's a tropical grass. To the top
Speaker 1: of it looks grassy, and it takes about a year
Speaker 1: or to grow. It takes about eighteen months from planting.
Speaker 1: But once it's planted, you know, you cut it back
Speaker 1: to the route and it will take another twelve months
Speaker 1: for that to grow back up to be harvested again.
Speaker 1: So what's the eighteen months thing? Eight months is if
Speaker 1: you plan at brand new, like from from seed, I guess,
Speaker 1: and it grows and breaks they call him cane brakes
Speaker 1: which I always think is like one of the neaterer
Speaker 1: like Earth science terms cane brakes, cane brake. Uh, it
Speaker 1: is grown and not always um refined near where it's grown,
Speaker 1: but it is harvested and u 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. You know, you want
Speaker 1: 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 table. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's 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 produced,
Speaker 1: then go watching our long video on YouTube. What was it?
Speaker 1: Remember how how um credibly complex chocolate making is. Remember
Speaker 1: I love all these These are some of my favorite ones. Salt, sugar, coffee, commodities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the commodity sweet. We gotta do tea. We haven't done tea, okay,
Speaker 1: and wine we still haven't done wine. Yet. Yeah. That
Speaker 1: one that just bugs me that we've got a great
Speaker 1: offer from a nice guy. I don't have his name
Speaker 1: in my memory, but I have his email in a safholder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was like, you need some help with this stuff.
Speaker 1: I've got experts. We're 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 seventeen percent it And if you're in Russia
Speaker 1: you could That's true. That's their racist pieces sugar beets.
Speaker 1: Uh in a starting international incident. No things are tense
Speaker 1: right now, you know, Yeah, between US and in Russia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like nineteen seventies seven. Again, Well, they kicking us
Speaker 1: out of the space station. I know. Star Wars just
Speaker 1: came out. Uh. So, if you're gonna process sugar beet,
Speaker 1: you're gonna slice it and you're gonna put it in
Speaker 1: hot water and you're gonna boil it, and it's similar
Speaker 1: to sugarcane. They're gonna make a sugary juice. Then they're
Speaker 1: gonna filter it, purify it, concentrate it, isolate those sugars,
Speaker 1: and eventually you're gonna get sugar crystals developing because you
Speaker 1: send that syrupy juice through what's called a centrifuge, and
Speaker 1: that's going to separate the crystal from what is known
Speaker 1: as the mother liquor whatever is left which is one
Speaker 1: of my favorite terms. Now, when whatever is left over
Speaker 1: that's not crystal is mother liquor like byproducts and the
Speaker 1: original juice. And apparently that can be uh extracted a
Speaker 1: few times, I would guess, so to get all the
Speaker 1: crystals out of it. Yeah, and I think sometimes they
Speaker 1: need to add a little sugar dust to spur that crystallization. Wow,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a magical process. It was mother liquor.
Speaker 1: There's sugar dust, and actually know that you bring up
Speaker 1: sugar dusts, you know, do you remember down in Savannah
Speaker 1: like two thousand seven eight, that's sugar refinery that exploded.
Speaker 1: It was sugar that exploded in the air. Yeah, sugar
Speaker 1: dust is particular matter, and when it gets into the air,
Speaker 1: it can catch fire and explode. And it did. It
Speaker 1: blew that place sky high. Yeah. When was that? I
Speaker 1: wrote about it when I got here, so I would
Speaker 1: guess like two thousand seven or two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: What was the article like, how can sugar explode? I
Speaker 1: think I remember seeing that. We should have touched on that.
Speaker 1: I guess we just did. But I mean, like you
Speaker 1: you go back and check out that now that you
Speaker 1: realize that it was just sugar. Yeah, that blew that
Speaker 1: place up. It it formed a crater. Basically, it just
Speaker 1: blew the whole refiner. Any flour could do that too, right,
Speaker 1: same principle. Yeah, any particulate matter I can do that.
Speaker 1: I think can it's nutty? Yeah? Um, alright, So sugarcane
Speaker 1: is a very similar process. They're gonna pulverize the stalk um,
Speaker 1: add water and lime and that's going to be your
Speaker 1: syrupy sweet juice and not lime like limestone. Yeah, not
Speaker 1: like squeeze limes into it. I had to double check, No,
Speaker 1: you're right, because it's tropical, you know exactly. Uh, And
Speaker 1: they're also going to run that through this interfuge, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna get your mother liquor in your crystals, and
Speaker 1: that is also going to be washed and filtered and
Speaker 1: refined further until you get your sugary white goodness. You know.
Speaker 1: Evaporations going on. It's it's it's one of those things
Speaker 1: that sounds complicated, but it's actually pretty simple. It's the
Speaker 1: same 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. It's fine. White
Speaker 1: sugar has zero molasses in it, like sugar in the
Speaker 1: raw has more and more, it's less refined um. And
Speaker 1: then the greatest byproduct of molasses is of course rum.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I put a little molasses in my when
Speaker 1: I make melin barbecue sauce. Oh yeah that's good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's nice. Another byproduct is called bagas, and that is um,
Speaker 1: the pulp essentially of the cane. Are you making these
Speaker 1: words up? No? Those are rewards. What mother looking in bagas?
Speaker 1: But gas we I think another process we studied. It's
Speaker 1: not it's not central just a sugar. It's just the
Speaker 1: pulpy fibrous matter leftover from this kind of process. I
Speaker 1: wonder what we talked about that and was it? Was
Speaker 1: it coffee? Now maybe maybe maybe? But the ba gas
Speaker 1: is used a big gas because I think I remembers
Speaker 1: discussing whether it was a big gass or by gas.
Speaker 1: It's bagas I listened to it today. Um yeah, we
Speaker 1: definitely cover that before. I'm starting to feel like an
Speaker 1: old man because when you when we have seven under
Speaker 1: topics or so oh yeah, like literally vaguely familiar. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to sound dumb, so you don't say anything
Speaker 1: and they just spend the next week and your head
Speaker 1: going over this. I'm telling you one day we were
Speaker 1: going to rerecord a show and not realize it, man,
Speaker 1: and we're going to hear about it. Well, what was it?
Speaker 1: It was still skulls. You know, we never release that one, right,
Speaker 1: But remember I was like, I thought for sure we
Speaker 1: recorded this, no dreams. What it was. We went to
Speaker 1: record dreams and we just were it just wasn't there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So but gas we definitely talked about. And the gas
Speaker 1: is a great byproduct because that can be used to
Speaker 1: power the sugar refinery. They actually burned that as fuel
Speaker 1: to create the steam used to power some of these machines.
Speaker 1: So that 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 in the 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 is not a looked upon as
Speaker 1: one of the more green products that is used and produced,
Speaker 1: like they have to use baby lambs to really refine
Speaker 1: it to its whitest. Not true, Well, it uses their
Speaker 1: souls at least, I guess, if you want to get technical,
Speaker 1: the souls of baby lambs, and then they're just left
Speaker 1: to wander the earth for the rest of their natural lives,
Speaker 1: like not feeling anything. So there's a lot of types
Speaker 1: of sugar. There are. Um, when you think about sugar,
Speaker 1: especially here in the West, you think, oh, that really white,
Speaker 1: like really pretty powdery granular stuff, and that's called table sugar,
Speaker 1: and that's what's known as sucros. That's right, And sucros
Speaker 1: is glucose and fruit toast sucros also apparently occurs naturally.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of different types of sugar that
Speaker 1: you're gonna find in plants, uh, and from some animals too. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So cow's milk contains lactose and gullactose, both of which
Speaker 1: are sugars um sucros. Again, that's typically table sugar, but
Speaker 1: I believe you can find that in plants, and that's
Speaker 1: glucose and fructose, like you said, yeah, and it's even
Speaker 1: one molecule glucose, one molecule fruit toast put them together,
Speaker 1: you've got sucros fruit toast is commonly found in fruits. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's also found in honey fruit toastes. And then um, glucose.
Speaker 1: This is the one you commonly think of when you
Speaker 1: think the body and sugar, because gluco us is what
Speaker 1: the body runs on. And we'll talk about that a
Speaker 1: little more in depth than a little bit. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's in honey and fruits and veggies. And then something
Speaker 1: called zylos, which I've never heard of, that's in wood
Speaker 1: and straw. It's pretty interesting. Yeah, there's a sugar alcohol
Speaker 1: called zilattle. Yeah, that's very sweet. Yeah. There's sugar alcohols
Speaker 1: and they supposedly um circumvent your blood sugar, your normal
Speaker 1: metabolic blood sugar process, so they taste sweet but they
Speaker 1: don't have any impact on your blood sugar. And one
Speaker 1: of them is called zio Litle zioltle, and that's the
Speaker 1: name of the product. Yeah. There's this uh Danish or
Speaker 1: Swedish gum that's like the best sugar free gum you
Speaker 1: can possibly get your hands on. It's called Ziolidle. This
Speaker 1: is so good. Terrible name though it is, but it's
Speaker 1: named after the sugar, which apparently is based on I
Speaker 1: guess it's probably would sugar alcohol. Wow, yeah, it's pretty creative.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I'm just recounting here, so I know I
Speaker 1: didn't know. You didn't You weren't complimenting me. Uh. Sugar
Speaker 1: comes in different granulations and from icing sugar, which is
Speaker 1: if you've ever heard of confection or sugar that you
Speaker 1: 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: year or so. Yeah, they're good. I never like I got.
Speaker 1: I don't indulge in that stuff. Man, what why is
Speaker 1: going on? Chuck? Well, you know, I'm I'm overweight and
Speaker 1: like it's there's just like you don't want to be
Speaker 1: the overweight guy walking up to the funnel 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
Speaker 1: avoid that stuff. Ice Cream is my big downfall. Oh
Speaker 1: it's your ice cream? What's your favorite? Um? Well, Ben
Speaker 1: and Jerry's like, but which one? Chubby hubb 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 country, But you
Speaker 1: can only get it in like seven states, that's how
Speaker 1: good it is. And um, they have a banana pudding
Speaker 1: flavor that is if you're in Nevada and you can't,
Speaker 1: the closest you can get it is in Mississippi. It's
Speaker 1: worth driving there for and it's like eight bucks for
Speaker 1: like a gallon or a half gallons, ridiculously expensive, but
Speaker 1: it is so good. All of their flavors are good,
Speaker 1: but their banana putting one is like it's just I'm
Speaker 1: about to cry. Yeah there. Um, their radio commercials or
Speaker 1: have you heard those? The songs are horrible. Oh it's
Speaker 1: the funniest stuff you've ever heard. The TV version of
Speaker 1: it is even worse. Yeah, it seems like a joke,
Speaker 1: Like are they serious or is this campy? Oh? They're serious.
Speaker 1: It's like an eighty five year old like braptist preachers
Speaker 1: and are you do like their ads? It's it is.
Speaker 1: It's campy. It's so it's and they don't mean it.
Speaker 1: It is For those of you who don't know the songs.
Speaker 1: It's literally like, you know, mama's baking the apple pie
Speaker 1: and putting in the window sill and like the picket
Speaker 1: fences outside, and we're eating bluebell ice cream because it
Speaker 1: tastes like the good old days. It's really funny. It
Speaker 1: rhymes more than that, but that's just it. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's on YouTube just type blue belt ice cream. Man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's good stuff. Um Man. That was a nice sidetrack.
Speaker 1: So then you got castor sugar, which is larger than
Speaker 1: powdered sugar but smaller than granulated sugar. Yeah, which I
Speaker 1: didn't know about until like a couple of months ago.
Speaker 1: I don't remember what recipe it was, but there was
Speaker 1: a recipe that you me was making that like called
Speaker 1: for castor sugar. She was like what both of us were, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you apparently you can make it if like with the
Speaker 1: coffee grinder, you can grind your regular sugar. Yes, she
Speaker 1: came across that. I think you finally founder she ordered
Speaker 1: it online or something like that. But she's making a
Speaker 1: meringue because they used a lot of morangue. Ex Evidently
Speaker 1: I don't remember, maybe I don't remember what did she
Speaker 1: need that for? I'll figure it out on my own
Speaker 1: time and let everybody know in the next episode. How
Speaker 1: about that, rather than all of us sitting here until
Speaker 1: I remember what the recipes and then I pick up
Speaker 1: the phone and collar and asked, right, that's good radio,
Speaker 1: my friend. Uh. Then you have your granulated sugar, and
Speaker 1: this is your table sugar. And then you've got preserving sugar,
Speaker 1: which looks sort of like sort of rock salty. It's
Speaker 1: chunkier or like sea salt, right course, sea salt sweeter
Speaker 1: than sea salt though, and that's used to preserve yes,
Speaker 1: much sweeter. Uh. Yeah, because that's another property of sugar
Speaker 1: is it's a preservative as well. Um, you can throw
Speaker 1: it into some jam if you want to make an
Speaker 1: extra sweet, but it'll also keep the bacteria away at bay,
Speaker 1: that's right, which is why, like you said, simple syrup
Speaker 1: can last for so long. Yeah, you can just make
Speaker 1: that and put it on your bar at riom temperature. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm keep it in the but you you keep it
Speaker 1: on hand, make it yourself. It's very easy. Plus also,
Speaker 1: if you like toss some lavender in there, got lavender
Speaker 1: simple syrup which goes with anything with gin in it. Yeah, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's so good. Um. You can put in some like
Speaker 1: all spice and some an a seed and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Lemon verbina, No, but I have made lemon like just
Speaker 1: from the the peel. Oh yeah. Lemon verbena is like
Speaker 1: just the green leaf. We grow a lot of that
Speaker 1: in the herb garden and if you smash it up,
Speaker 1: it smells so good, like I imagine it would be
Speaker 1: good muddled in a drink if I was into that.
Speaker 1: Are you not? You know that I'm not into the cocktails.
Speaker 1: I thought you were whiskey over ice. So you can
Speaker 1: jazz it up a little bit here there, No, not me. Okay.
Speaker 1: Uh So I guess we should talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about high fruit dost corn syrup. We did a whole
Speaker 1: show on it, yeah, which you can go back and
Speaker 1: listen to. But it bears mentioning here because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of it gets a bad rap um and the
Speaker 1: evidence is sort of inconclusive right now. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think what we determined is it's not necessarily any worse
Speaker 1: feed than sugar, but it's in a lot more stuff
Speaker 1: and you may not know it. I don't remember what
Speaker 1: we concluded. What my understanding is at this point, and
Speaker 1: that was from two thousand nine. UM, there's a really
Speaker 1: great 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 the highlights. Well, like you said,
Speaker 1: high fruit toast corn syrup isn't molecularly different very much
Speaker 1: from sucrose, which is sugar. Most high fruit toast corn
Speaker 1: syrup or the stuff that's most widely used, is like
Speaker 1: fruit toast to glucoast, So that five difference UM and
Speaker 1: fruit toast shouldn't make much difference, but apparently it does.
Speaker 1: The other aspect of high frue toast corn syrup is
Speaker 1: that that extra fructoast are all that fruit toast that
Speaker 1: is processed in the liver. Any cell in your body
Speaker 1: can process glucose. When you eat something that has glucose
Speaker 1: in it, UH, your pancreas releases insulin, and insulin goes
Speaker 1: hey open up cells and the glucose goes in and
Speaker 1: it's converted. It's biochemical energy is converted to a t
Speaker 1: P and then you have this packet of energy that
Speaker 1: can be used by any cell any cell can do that,
Speaker 1: which means your entire body can metabolize glucose. Fructoast has
Speaker 1: to be broken down into glucose, 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. Yeah right, that's if you
Speaker 1: have too much of it, right, yeah. Now, with high
Speaker 1: fruc toast corn syrup, apparently evidence shows that when it
Speaker 1: hits the liver, it's just automatically converted to fat, and
Speaker 1: that the speed with which it's metabolized also has an
Speaker 1: effect on how much or how frequently it's converted to fat.
Speaker 1: And with high fruit toast corn syrup, it's syrup, and
Speaker 1: syrup apparently hits the liver a lot faster than say,
Speaker 1: an equal amount of apples that you're getting fruit toast from,
Speaker 1: so it's being converted to fat like automatically. That's why
Speaker 1: they think that high fruit toast corn syrup is actually
Speaker 1: far worse from you than just regular fruit toast or
Speaker 1: even sucros table sugar. Right, while the obesity epidemic is
Speaker 1: sort of matched year to year with the introduction of
Speaker 1: high fruit toast corn syrup as far as increase um.
Speaker 1: So that makes sense. I read an article today that
Speaker 1: said that added sugars overall is the problem, whether it's
Speaker 1: high frec dose corn syrup or regular added sugar. Well,
Speaker 1: that's added sugars in a product. That's the U s
Speaker 1: d a's line, and the U s d A doesn't
Speaker 1: want to upset the sugar industry or the Cornerfiners 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 fructose 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 GMOs at some
Speaker 1: point too, you know. Yeah, everyone keeps calling for it.
Speaker 1: Some guys send us a book. Yeah yeah, oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Did you read it? No, I haven't read it. Um.
Speaker 1: Apparently six of americans calories come from added sugars, which
Speaker 1: is just like totally empty calories. So again there's a
Speaker 1: there's a big there's an argument over those numbers. Yeah. Sure,
Speaker 1: no one really knows, but supposedly the numbers are very
Speaker 1: artificially low. Um. And that the average American eats about
Speaker 1: ninety five pounds of sugar a year. Oh yeah yeah wow,
Speaker 1: and the global average is something like, um sixty six pounds.
Speaker 1: But Israel eats something like a hundred and forty five
Speaker 1: pounds per person per year. What what that's from sweets? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they eat a lot of sugar package foods. Um. Are
Speaker 1: we done with HFCs then for now? Yeah? I go
Speaker 1: back and listen to the episode. It was a good one,
Speaker 1: one of my favorites. Yeah, it's been a while. I'm
Speaker 1: to re listen to that, but I didn't get a chance. Um,
Speaker 1: So sugar in the body, we've been this also a
Speaker 1: hearkens back to our episode on taste it uh corresponds
Speaker 1: molecularly on your with your taste buds on the tongue
Speaker 1: because of the shape of the molecule. We talked about
Speaker 1: that the molecules are shaped to fit. You know, when
Speaker 1: sugar hits it, it matches up perfectly with that molecule
Speaker 1: and sends a message said, hey, there's something sweet as
Speaker 1: opposed to salty or bitter or sour or umami. Fi right,
Speaker 1: this say is four and then names five, which I
Speaker 1: thought was I even changed it on my sheet. Um.
Speaker 1: And they reckon in something that I do not recommend,
Speaker 1: which is uh, if something tastes sweet in the wild,
Speaker 1: it's more likely to be safe to eat than something bitter.
Speaker 1: It's sort of true. But you should never ever go
Speaker 1: and like in a survival scenario and just try and
Speaker 1: eat something even a little bit. Um. There's a test
Speaker 1: you can do which I won't get into, but it
Speaker 1: involves like rubbing on your skin first, waiting a certain
Speaker 1: amount of time. They may be touching it to your tongue,
Speaker 1: waiting a certain amount of time. But you should never
Speaker 1: just go like, I wonder if this is edible, let
Speaker 1: me taste it? Right, It's not a good idea good
Speaker 1: going even if it is sweet. You're a survivalist. I
Speaker 1: know some things, so you know, we said sugar is
Speaker 1: found in all plants, just to varying degrees. UM and
Speaker 1: plants create sugar is a byproduct of photosynthesis, and they
Speaker 1: use it for energy for growth. They also use it
Speaker 1: to They take sugars and turn them into more complex
Speaker 1: sugars to use for like um sell you their structure
Speaker 1: like cellulose um. But they also use sugar in their
Speaker 1: nectar to attract bees and other things to help them pollinate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and propagate their species because it's sweet stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love it when I see the little bee getting
Speaker 1: in there getting a little something sweet. Yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like they're getting a little treat, you know, that's right,
Speaker 1: And then they're vomiting it up and we eat it
Speaker 1: as honey. That's true. Uh, sugar is bad for your teeth.
Speaker 1: Everyone knows that. Um specifically, when you eat sugar, it's
Speaker 1: gonna form something called a glyco protein, that little sweater
Speaker 1: on your teeth. And bacteria love to eat that stuff
Speaker 1: and then they love to poop out lactic acid afterwards,
Speaker 1: unto your teeth. Yes, specifically stripped a caucus mutans, that's
Speaker 1: the culprit for cavities. We've said stripped a caucus before
Speaker 1: and that's not a good word. No, but there's different
Speaker 1: kinds of strap. Okay um. But when they p about
Speaker 1: that lactic acid, that's what's on your enamel, that's what's
Speaker 1: gonna wear it on your teeth. So eating sugary stuff
Speaker 1: really is bad for your teeth. That's not like something
Speaker 1: your mom tells you. That's a lie. And the bacteria
Speaker 1: also provide or produces a biofilm around all of this
Speaker 1: stuff which traps it in there and traps in the
Speaker 1: lactic acid as well. So you're in trouble. Yeah, you're dead,
Speaker 1: not dead, but you make it diabetes. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: get diabetes um from too much sugar and that that
Speaker 1: apparently is um. It's crazy that there's a real parallel
Speaker 1: between the six country study in the seven country study
Speaker 1: that we talked about in the Paleo Diet episode of fats,
Speaker 1: apparently there was a rival all along that said it's
Speaker 1: not fat, it's sugar. Like we're both after the same problem.
Speaker 1: But this guy went after fats, this other guy went
Speaker 1: after sugar. And now they're starting to think, like now
Speaker 1: that they're thinking it's not fats after all, that contributed
Speaker 1: to like heart disease and obesity that they think is
Speaker 1: actually sugar, and the the way that it's sugar is
Speaker 1: through something called metabolic syndrome, to where if you eat
Speaker 1: too much sugar, your body becomes resistant to insulin. And
Speaker 1: remember insulin gets glucose out of the blood stream and
Speaker 1: into your cells and is converted to energy. Well, if
Speaker 1: your body starts sucking at doing that, then you have
Speaker 1: a lot more glucose in your blood stream, which means
Speaker 1: you're pancreases producing more and more insulin. Insulin remember, triggers
Speaker 1: fat storage, So you have more and more insulin, you
Speaker 1: have more and more fat storage, you have obesity, you
Speaker 1: have heart disease, and they think that possibly the number
Speaker 1: one contributor to heart attacks is metabolic syndrome and not
Speaker 1: necessarily saturated fats. Right. Interesting, But as a result of
Speaker 1: this aside result is insulin, you develop your diabetes. Type
Speaker 1: two diabetes is the result of insulin resistance where you
Speaker 1: have to inject insulin into your body because your body
Speaker 1: is not producing enough any longer because it's overtaxed your pancreases. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we got a lot of great responses from the Paleo episode.
Speaker 1: It was a really interesting one. Yeah, and people saying, like, dudes,
Speaker 1: we know so little still about nutrition, and things are
Speaker 1: changing so much with the things we eat and put
Speaker 1: in our body that it's hard to keep up, which
Speaker 1: is why it's so insulting when some industry that has
Speaker 1: a vested interest in so they got all figured out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and don't worry about it, just keep eating it. You
Speaker 1: know that that's that's insulting. All right, Can sugar power
Speaker 1: your car? Yes? How I'll explain. There's a couple of ways. Um,
Speaker 1: So there's sugar based ethanol, which Brazil was basically running
Speaker 1: on for many years. I didn't realize that they're big
Speaker 1: into flex fuels and ethanol. They were basically energy independent
Speaker 1: in the first decade of the twenty one century because
Speaker 1: they said, we're tired of being dependent on foreign oil. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's figure or something out. And they did. They put
Speaker 1: all they Yeah, they started looking into sugarcane, making ethanol
Speaker 1: from sugarcane, and you know there's like corn based ethanol,
Speaker 1: which um, Chris Pallette and I talked about in the
Speaker 1: Grass Lena episode, remember that. And apparently ethanol made from
Speaker 1: sugarcane as eight hundred times more energy output. And so
Speaker 1: they were making ethanol in it. In two thousand eight
Speaker 1: of the fuel sold in Brazil was ethanol made from
Speaker 1: sugarcane right there in the country. Well, then gas prices
Speaker 1: lowered and UM people started using gas again because they'll
Speaker 1: use whatever's cheapest. But Brazil, even though it's on its heels,
Speaker 1: the ethanol industry there is they proved it's a completely
Speaker 1: viable alternative fuel. Yeah. The problem though, again with UM
Speaker 1: refining more and more sugar for these purposes is the
Speaker 1: deforestation and worker wages. And I feel like anytime we've
Speaker 1: covered any commodity like this, there's some workers somewhere in
Speaker 1: the world getting screwed over, and sugar is definitely not
Speaker 1: any stranger in that process. Well. Also it drives up
Speaker 1: food prices too, yeah, UM, because if if there's two
Speaker 1: different huge sectors competing for the same commodity like there,
Speaker 1: it's going to drive the price of that commodity up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. So if you have energy and food right
Speaker 1: going after sugar prices, sugar goes up, right. I wish
Speaker 1: people could have seen that demonstration. He really brings it home. Uh.
Speaker 1: And what else is the other I remember, I think
Speaker 1: we talked about this too. Uh, sugar devouring microorganisms basically
Speaker 1: feeding on sugar and making energy in the process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a like viable, viable way in the future maybe
Speaker 1: to power things. Yeah, so there's a certain certain types
Speaker 1: of microbes are more sugar hungry than others. Yeah. But yeah,
Speaker 1: when they're eating sugar, they managed to separate electrons and
Speaker 1: loosen loosen electrons, and as the electrons flow, as we
Speaker 1: mentioned in our electricity episode, the flow of electrons is electricity.
Speaker 1: So if you direct that flow across like some something
Speaker 1: that can use it, you create a current. And the
Speaker 1: cool thing about microbial fuel cells is when that electron
Speaker 1: makes it to the other side, it um combines to
Speaker 1: form water. So that's the byproduct like this. So it
Speaker 1: it truly is a very um environmentally friendly alternative fuel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did. We covered that at some point too. I remember,
Speaker 1: it's our world is getting smaller because we're explaining it.
Speaker 1: That's right. You got anything else? No, I don't think so, mother, liquor,
Speaker 1: the gas, all these words I made up just for
Speaker 1: the show. You did 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: received an email from a creation that's explaining that both
Speaker 1: creationists and scientists believe in natural selection, and that both
Speaker 1: groups believe in micro evolution but disagree on macro evolution.
Speaker 1: What the person did not mention is that macro and
Speaker 1: micro evolution describe the same process of natural selection, just
Speaker 1: on different timetables. Uh, micro a short term, macros 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 population subgroup as
Speaker 1: they adapt to their environment, but the changes are small.
Speaker 1: 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 a 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 does not believe in germ theory. I'm sure they
Speaker 1: might exist, but I would definitely take their expertise with
Speaker 1: a large dose of salt. Quite a rebuttal. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I didn't have a name. I feel bad, so I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm gonna say thanks you, Thanks Richard Dawkins. I
Speaker 1: appreciate that so the evolutionists have rebutted, what say you creationists?
Speaker 1: Let us know? And everybody stopped tweeting and sending emails
Speaker 1: about how dare we put a creationists views on and
Speaker 1: listener mail? Yeah. Yeah, there's no way to go through
Speaker 1: life trying to silence your opponents. Yeah, your debate and engage.
Speaker 1: I was surprised there were a lot of people that
Speaker 1: said you shouldn't give equal time to this stuff because
Speaker 1: it's just not true. Yeah. Somebody said, Um, I thought
Speaker 1: discovery stood for something interesting. Yeah, well, hey, I think
Speaker 1: debate is healthy and they think you're not right either,
Speaker 1: So like you know, yep, debate is healthy. Chuck exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: If not, Bill and I wouldn't have done it, boom.
Speaker 1: If you want to contribute to the debate, we want
Speaker 1: to hear from you. You can tweet to us at
Speaker 1: s y SK podcast. You can join us on Facebook
Speaker 1: dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know, send us an
Speaker 1: email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: and as always, check us out at our home on
Speaker 1: the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. Stuff you
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