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Researchers are now developing new forms of real sugar
- wrnr 6y agoThe mirror molecule of glucose tastes the same but has no caloric value because our bodies chemistry is depended on the handedness of a molecule. It is however very expensive to make because all of nature prefers the same handedness. No natural sources exist, because is is useless from an evolutionary point of view. It is however possible that extra-terrestrial-life uses the opposite handedness, so they send a bunch of very expensive sugar to mars to test if there is life there.
- acchow 6y agoHowever, turns out L-glucose is a laxative. If our enzymes can't bind to it, what is causing this physiological response?
- roywiggins 6y agoReddit agrees with my first instinct that it probably draws water into your gut via osmosis. https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2347u0/til_that_glucose_sugar_has_an_opposite_handed/cgtecw5/ https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2347u0/til_t...
- refurb 6y agoThe other reason is that often the bacteria in your gut can metabolize sugars that our own enzymes can't. They basically go nuts with a huge food source. You get gas and diarrhea because of their waste products.
- novia 6y agoYou're being downvoted because EVERY form of life on earth discovered so far metabolizes D-Glucose. If you find a microbe with the ability to metabolize L-Glucose it'll be big news, and most likely an alien.
- dwohnitmok 6y agoNot quite. "An L-glucose catabolic pathway in Paracoccus species 43P" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23038265/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23038265/ But it's true the vast vast majority of life on earth cannot metabolize L-glucose and it would be unlikely to have bacteria in your gut capable of metabolizing it.
- ars 6y agoThe sugar is not digested so it remains in the gut. Then the sugar, because of osmosis, draws water in from the surrounding tissue. This extra water then causes the laxative effect.
- m463 6y agoand then you lose weight (water weight)
- meiraleal 6y agoIt is weird to imagine that the evolution is to eat a laxative cake in place of taking care of sugar addiction. "Hey! This version of cocaine makes you still feel hungry!"
- Animats 6y agoIt's straightforward to convert sugar to "invert sugar", with both isomers. So you can get down to 50% calories. Left-handed sugar still seems to be hard to isolate, though. Merck sells it for about US$108/gram.[1] Too much even for expensive restaurants. However, there's a new synthesis method available. Could have startup potential.[2] [1] https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/sigma/g5500?lang=en®ion=US https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/sigma/g5500?lan... [2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237860195_L-Glucose_A_convenient_synthesis_from_D-glucose https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237860195_L-Glucose...
- ars 6y agoThat's not what invert sugar is.
- ashtonkem 6y agoI wonder if this would still trigger an insulin spike. It's been hypothesized that an insulin spike after consuming artificial sweeteners is at least part of why those who switch to them often don't lose the weight they expected (this process is verified in vitro and in rats, but not in humans to my knowledge). If an insulin spike still happens, it will cause a "sugar crash", which will typically drive extra consumption even if the original source was calorie free.
- doctoboggan 6y agoInteresting video from Steve Mould covering this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=975r9a7FMqc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=975r9a7FMqc
- aidenn0 6y agoTotally off topic, but why is it L and D instead of L and R or S and D?
- ac29 6y agoIts from Latin: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/laevus#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/laevus#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dexter#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dexter#Latin
- jfengel 6y agoScience seems to have gone with "levo-" prefixes rather than "sinistro-", though "sinistrorotary" does see occasional usage[1]. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=sinistrorotatory&sxsrf=ALeKk02WVOTiWQZ1Tg-d4QGbHLoS6kJWeg:1601661140574&source=lnms&tbm=bks&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjRg9bavJbsAhXylHIEHS9sAKwQ_AUoAXoECAsQCQ&biw=873&bih=732 https://www.google.com/search?q=sinistrorotatory&sxsrf=ALeKk...
- hikerclimber 6y agothis won't work. it will hope to lead to diabetes.
- patagurbon 6y agoDo you have any evidence for that?
- admash 6y ago“ Evidence from RCTs does not clearly support the intended benefits of nonnutritive sweeteners for weight management, and observational data suggest that routine intake of nonnutritive sweeteners may be associated with increased BMI and cardiometabolic risk.” Azad MB, Abou-Setta AM, Chauhan BF, Rabbani R, Lys J, Copstein L, Mann A, Jeyaraman MM, Reid AE, Fiander M, MacKay DS, McGavock J, Wicklow B, Zarychanski R. Nonnutritive sweeteners and cardiometabolic health: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials and prospective cohort studies. CMAJ. 2017 Jul 17;189(28):E929-E939. doi: 10.1503/cmaj.161390. PMID: 28716847; PMCID: PMC5515645.
- meiraleal 6y ago"Forget artificial sweeteners. Researchers are now developing new forms of real sugar, to deliver sweetness with fewer calories. But tricking our biology is no easy feat." Sugar is already tricking our biology. It brought us a diabetes pandemic. It is weird to say that it is difficult to get worse, but looks inevitable if we are using scientists to create more sugar in place of fixing the issues the overconsumption of it already created.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> Sugar is already tricking our biology. There's no trick involved. Sugar appears to be exactly what it is. You want to eat it because it's sugar; that's your biology functioning as intended.
- refurb 6y agoWe already have something similar - sucralose. You basically substitute 3 of the hydroxyl groups with chlorine atoms. Human and bacterial enzymes (at least the ones in the gut) can't digest it. It's basically excreted unchanged.
- poiuyt098 6y agoCreating problems instead of solutions. The answer is to STOP putting sugar into everything so that people learn what sweet tastes like. Fast so that you know what hunger feels like, and so when you eat enough calories stop eating! instead of continuing to stuff yourself with low-calorie garbage.
- vikiomega9 6y agoI always wonder about this. Why do we choose to solve a problem with another. Something about individual freedom or something?
- 754dvhy 6y agoDependency and addiction nurture recurring revenue. Fasting doesn't.
- anthropodie 6y agoStop putting carbon dioxide in our environment instead we are developing technologies to capture it. Although, I think in this case it is required because it's high time.
- orangecat 6y agoThis is identical reasoning to social conservatives who would say that the solution to STDs and unplanned pregnancies is to stop having non-procreative sex, rather than wasting effort on vaccines and contraceptives that will never be 100% effective.
- nmfisher 6y agoYeah, I think it's time we recognize that many (most?) humans simply lack the willpower to resist overconsumption, particularly when it comes to sweet/fried foods. I would struggle to find a single country where rising wealth/living standards didn't correlate with a rise in obesity. "Stop stuffing your face" will, causally, prevent obesity. "Stop having sex" and "don't take drugs" will, causally, prevent unplanned pregnancies and drug addictions, too. But thousands of years of human behaviour show that these are not effective policies because humans will never follow them. Thinking otherwise is simply delusional. The sugar debate is really fascinating, too, because it's a clash of two diametrically opposed philosophies. On the one hand, it's something demonstrably "bad" that humans (on average) demonstrably cannot control themselves from consuming. On the other, it's something that a lot of people find really enjoyable. Who are we to dictate the life priorities of our neighbours? Just because I think living like a monk is worth an extra decade of life doesn't mean someone else does. I'm gradually settling on the view that these substances should be sufficiently taxed to pay for the associated healthcare costs, but no more. Personally, I feel that those taxes should also subsidise healthier foods (at least for low-income individuals families), but that may be a harder sell.
- rdlecler1 6y agoSugar has a lot of important properties in many food products beyond making it sweet. It’s important in the browning, bulking, and springiness of a lot of foods. People who simply say don’t eat sugar dont seem to understand you need to replace it with something. Using a rare sugar fiber or some other kind of carbohydrate is a good place to start. Disclosure: we’re an investor in Stem Sugar (YC-18)
- enchiridion 6y agoQuestion: Say we can produce large quantities of L-glucose. How hard would it be for organisms to evolve to metabolize it? Would it be like evolving resistance to extreme heat (hard) or more like antibiotic resistance (not hard)?
- nimish 6y agoThere's growing evidence that excess sugar consumption is at the root of many metabolic diseases including heart disease. It certainly doesn't hurt to cut down on sugar intake. Easiest to avoid eating added sugars and saccharine sweetnesa than to try to engineer something that might have its own set of side effects.
- afrojack123 6y agoThis is going to be a disaster. They mix hexane in cooking oils. So many people have to get some form of heart surgery in their 50s because of this. Stay away