Of course Americans love their products stuffed with sugar.. your ordinary bread is almost like a really fluffy cake. But in that case there's just more sugar, so the culprit is easily identified :)
Remember that we rely on very noisy abstractions in many sciences, and especially in biology, nutrition, and public health. In terms of the (abstract) model of calories-as-fuel, different sugars mostly all have the same effect of providing about 4 calories per gram. And in terms of the (abstract) model of glucose-as-blood sugar, they all get more or less converted to glucose eventually.
But behind those useful high level abstractions, these are all different molecules and bodies have different ways of processing them: different gut absorption and biome effects, different organs, different catalysts, different pathways, different rates of processing, etc.
So from certain views, yes, "sugar is sugar" but from other views each compound that we call sugar is a different molecule and this implies critical and sometimes quite impactful differences in how any body may respond to it at any given time.
[1] https://kansasfarmfoodconnection.org/spotlights/which-is-bet...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose#Carbohydrate_content_...
The question as to whom it might impact differently and in what way takes a critical survey of research, of which much has been done. With the output of that research being contentious and hotly debated, I have no interest in trying to summarize that here even if it was what I read the GP to have asked.
Sucrose is just fructose + glucose.
There is actually evidence that the sugar makeup (fructose vs glucose) makes a differences in how it is metabolized, but the bigger impact seems to be coingestion of fiber.[0] Added sugars don't usually come alongside "added fibers". (this is also partially why glycemic index is strongly correlated with added sugar content but much less with naturally present sugar content)
[0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/the-bitter-tr...
So no.. all sugars are not equal.
From a metabolism standpoint hfcs and table sugar are basically the same thing, except the former has water in it.
Sucrose is broken into fructose and glucose by an enzyme in the small intestine.
Honey and agave are also fructose and glucose, making the whole hfcs is worse than table sugar, honey, or agave thing even sillier.
And agave does have a lower glymetic index than table sugar. So that certainly makes a difference.
Also I think that more naturally grown food is in general better and healthier for us compared to artificially / synthatically make food. Because natural processes add a lot more nutritional value to the food than we realize. We keep discovering new things that are in there which we didn't know about before.
Fructose is metabolized in the liver, i.e. similar to alcohol. Glucose can be used directly by cells. The biggest issue is that fructose doesn't tell the brain that you've had enough, while glucose does (I'm guessing it's because of the delay the liver adds.) So you can eat more fructose than glucose without starting to feel weird. At the same time, you're straining the liver.
If you're eating equal parts glucose and fructose (like sucrose), it's not a problem, as your body is used to it and can adjust its glucose sensitivity. But if you completely remove that signal substance, it doesn't stand a chance.
This might be the money shot. Basically, HFCS isn't much worse in of itself, but humans are much more prone to overconsume products with high amount of sucrose.
Thanks for making the point!
But yeah, we like to put sugar in everything, because we learned fat was the devil in the 70s? and when you remove all the fat, adding in sugar makes things palletable again. :p
Allow me to be the counterpoint here: I can finish an equivalent amount of NFCS or Cane Sugar (pretty much the only common alternative) soda with the same ease.
My thoughts on the issue with HFCS: it's cheap as fuck, the human body loooooooooooves sweet, so lazy food developers throw that shit in everything. Yea yea yea, "the live metabolization" and all that shit, but honestly it's the prevalence not the molecule itself. Is the issue that we put HFCS in Ketchup over regular sugar...or that we put so much extra sugar into the blend at all?
My family recently realized that corn tortilla chips actually have less salt than the brand of flour tortillas we were using. I assumed incorrectly that deep fried, salted chips would have more sodium.
Although I will say that sometimes some food manufacturers use sea salt that has a higher potassium chloride content in an effort to reduce the sodium. I was buying canned corn the other day, both from the same company but one listed as lower sodium. They both used "sea salt" but the original sodium version used "natural" sea salt whereas the lower sodium one made no such claim. Likely they were using modified sea salt that had higher potassium content while still keeping the overall salinity the same. They didn't say "less salt", which is what many product do say, they said "less sodium" which is technically true.
But regular sugar contains fructose in almost the same proportion as high-fructose corn syrup, so it's not a much better or worse alternative.
Edited to add: Fructose also has ten times higher glycation activity than glucose, which is the process by which sugar binds to (and destroys) proteins and lipids in the body.
When these are the only products available to buy, “love” is a bit strong of a word choice I think. Certainly we consume shitloads of sugars— but for a great many of us its all that is available.
I sure do “love” my poor health, enforced by poverty and shit products available to me.
I think it really is Americans like the taste of sugar. Would be interesting to know if other countries are just behind us in ramping up sugar in food or if some sort of legislation is the difference. Really don't see much reason that some descendants of Europeans would have such a taste difference than other descendants.
If adding sugar to your product causes it to sell more then a company is going to do so. If every option for food include sugar then at every price point (including below poverty) then you're going to buy sugared food; but it's not because sugar is negatively priced, it's because it sold better.
The proportion of people who don't have access to a kitchen and a grocery store is far less than the proportion of people consuming too much sugar.
The widespread popularity products with added sugar, such as soda, coffee flavored drinks, sweetened breads (donuts, etc), is by far the bigger factor in overconsumption of sugar.
In the end calories are calories, but what I learned from endurance sports is that these two surgars have different transport pathways. You can absorb a certain amount of each one individually up to your individual chemistry's max.
It is just a cheap way to make a lot of sugar. That makes sugary foods cheap. Which helps make people diabetic and fat due to overconsumption.