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Hi, friends. Sugar is delicious and it is also not very good for you. And we did an episode on Sugar from June 12th, 2014, Sugar Colen. It powers the Earth and it truly does. It's a lot to this one. We probably hit it on a two parter, but we shrunk it down into one episode as we try to do. And here we go with Sugar right now.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio's HowStuffWorks.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark, there's just a Retek Bryant, howdy. Uh, hi, sugar. And then that's a I was thinking about the earlier thought she was an Archie song, oh, sugar. Oh, honey, honey, do you see called your girlfriend like Sugar or honey or your wife or whatever. And that's those are all sweet things. Yeah. All make sense.

Do you hit your head. Yeah.

I mean, you wouldn't call me call your wife something better.

Right. You look like a Korean melon.

I was trying to think of something better. I couldn't think of anything. Uh, arugula. Come here, my little Korean melon. I bet someone said that. Who? I don't know. Someone Korean know in Korea. They just call melons on the straw man.

This is the worst start ever. This is the worst ever.

I knew we would achieve it. We've been building towards what we top ourselves every episode. Really? That's right. Chuck.

Yes. Have you ever tasted sugar? I have.

I'm trying to bring it back from the brink. Yes, I have. I have two sugars. A big popular sweetener these days.

It is. And it's been around for a while.

I don't know if you know this or not, but yeah, apparently they think sugar is indigenous to the island known as New Guinea in the South Pacific. Yeah, around Polynesia. And that as long as 5000 to 8000 years ago, the Polynesians were cultivating it. Yeah. And going like, this is the jam. Yeah. Sweet and yummy and gives us energy and makes us fat.

Remember that Simpsons where they were. I guess Bart grows up to be like a paid taste tester. Yeah. Yeah. And like he drinks that soda and like turns into like this horrible, huge disfigured thing and you're sweet.

And the guy with the clipboard goes pleasing taste some monster ism.

You don't remember that. Oh, it's great. Was that the one where it was there all of their future selves?

No, it was like just a momentary daydream. Got you. And it goes back to like his normal self and he's like, cool. Like he can't wait to grow up to be a professional taster.

Also, you know, the table reading we set out on that should be coming out. I can't wait to see this. Right. It was a good one. Yeah. It should be coming out. It's exciting. I'm excited. We can't say what it's about now. We don't know if we can. We're just covering we're going to air on the side of caution because the last thing we want is for The Simpsons to be mad at us after all these years.

For real. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. So where are we, sugar? Yeah. So I guess apparently Island hopped from New Guinea across Polynesia, made its way up to Indonesia. Yeah. And then finally landed in India. And when it was in India it really started to spread. Everything spread from India back then. Trade routes.

And thanks to the Crusades, it was brought to Western Europe, well, even before that, the Persians started conquering the land and they encountered sugar and brought that with them. That's right. And then you got Columbus.

That jerk brought sugar cane itself to the Caribbean and said, you know, like some some root sampling's and said, let's try and plant this stuff here. Yeah. And it turned out it was a great place to plant sugar cane.

It really was, because sugarcane is a tropical plant. Yeah. The cane. You can't grow it any just anywhere now, but you can grow in places like South America, the Caribbean and South Africa, southern United States, you're hot places. India, as we already mentioned. Yeah.

And it just kind of spread like wildfire across the world, especially once it came to what's known as the New World, like you said, via Columbus. Unfortunately, it also was and it became an agent of slavery.

Yes, it certainly did. It fueled the slave trade for quite a while. And then by 1750, there were 120 sugar refineries in Britain. They call it white gold. Yeah. And it was up until that point, it had been kind of a luxury.

Well, a little before that, it became a little more widespread. It was a complete luxury, like literally it was for royalty, pretty much. It was so rare and hard to come by, apparently the first. Enter the first Seabourne International Sugar Exchange, yeah, was between Venice and England and 13, 19, I saw that Venice was the first place where they were like refining it really well.

Right. In the Venetians that were that was a merchant city, if there ever was one. Yeah. So they were selling it. And one of the places they sold, the first place they sold it to overseas was England and it was in 1019 and they sold 50 tons for what's the equivalent of about 11 million dollars today.

And that's tons with an E, I'm sure. So yes.

And right now you could get that for about 20000 dollars. It was eleven million dollars back then.

So it was very, very expensive. But then two things happened that opened the sugar industry and made it available to the general public. The Reformation. Yeah. Which actually strangely led to a decrease in honey because monasteries were the major producers of honey. Yeah, monks kept bees and the Reformation led to a closure of a lot of monasteries. Yeah.

And secondly, sugar just became more available, like those two things happened at the same time. And all of a sudden it was something that the average person could get their hands on. That's right. And it actually led to a huge increase in tea consumption. Oh, yeah. Because before then, people drink tea. But once they started putting sugar in their tea, they were like, we love tea.

Right? And that's when it became like the the national drink of Great Britain.

Man, I love a good English tea with a little cream and a little sugar in it. Yeah, just delicious.

Utøya I like the erby kind more.

No, I like it all man. I love green tea. I love. English, breakfast, tea, love, black tea, I'll even do a little I'll try it up every now and then. Oh, wow, I'm I'm into all of it. That's a wild sidewalk walk.

And from about 1792 to 1850, and there was a lot of whoring going on in Europe and there were naval blockades by Britain that basically Europe needed that sugar fix. And they were like, but you can't cut us off.

We love sugar now, Colombia.

And so in 1747, they realised that the sugar beet, which is the other way you can get sugar, was a great way to do it. And that's how they get their sugar today still. Yeah. And the beet is looks like a beet that's not purple. It's a root. Right. And it grows up out of the ground. Looks like a little, uh, just sort of whitish light brown.

Looks like a turnip. Yes. Or like a turnip. But it's sweet. It is. About 17 percent of the sugar beet is can eventually become sugar, as opposed to only about 10 percent in the cane. Right. Which I thought was unusual. Yeah.

So you have these two plants that can be processed separately, independently, and both will produce sugar indistinguishable to the average person. Yeah, cane would be pretty neat.

And the reason why, Chuck, the reason why that would be indistinguishable is because all plants have sugar.

That's right. It's a carbohydrate, a simple carbohydrate and sugar is a part of photosynthesis.

But you can't go out and get, you know, a plate of switchgrass and get enough sugar out of it to make sugar. Right. Even though the sugar in it, it's only abundant enough in the beat in the cane to really produce sugar. Sugar. Exactly.

But sugar is kind of this way. It's a molecule that powers the earth. Yeah.

Really.

Like humans, plants, everything gets is powered by sugar. It's pretty neat. It is pretty neat. Uh, it is also as a you can be use it as a preservative. It prevents bacteria from growing in jam. Sometimes you can change the texture they use. It is like a food additive to make something look and feel different, not only just taste different, they're like this doesn't put fuzzy little jackets on people's teeth when they eat it enough.

So let's add some sugar.

And our favorite use of sugar is to make booze accelerates fermentation.

And my favorite uses of sugar are to make booze and to make Reese's Pieces.

OK, let's leave that out.

Yeah, it's an important part of the production of Alcohol and Reese's Pieces invasive species, and it does make the world go round, um, and the world actually produces quite a bit of sugar.

So in this article from a few years ago, it says that, um, the world made about seventy eight million tonnes of 71 metric tons of sugar cane annually. Is that accurate still, do you know?

Well, it's just sugar cane. But I know that sugar cane accounts for 80 percent of sugar production, 80 percent about, and then sugar beets account for about 20 percent, the other 20 percent. But in, I think 2013, the world produced one hundred and sixty five million metric tons of sugar. OK. Yeah, so I guess you'd have to be a mathematician to figure out that formula, but plus you probably have to have more info than we just gave.

Yeah, uh, the cane sugar cane looks sort of like bamboo. The stock does. It's a tropical grass at the top of it looks grassy and it takes about a year to grow. It takes about 18 months from planting. Right.

But once it's planted, you know, you cut it back to the root and it'll take another 12 months for that to grow back up to be harvested again.

Right. So what's 18 months thing that the 18 months is if you plant a brand new oh, Godchaux like from from seed, I guess. I see. And it grows and breaks. They call cane breaks, which I always think is like one of the neater like earth science terms. Canebrake, canebrake. Yeah. Uh, it is grown and. Not always refind near where it's grown, but it is harvested and then processed initially close to where it's grown, so it doesn't rot, sort of like like when we did coffee.

Yeah. You know, you want to do most of that stuff near where it's grown. Right.

And there are some steps you have to take to harvest sugar, at least even get it to the to the raw state. But yeah, not every processing place refines it all the way to what we would call table sugar. Yeah. Sometimes it's sent to a refinery. Yeah. So I guess we can cover that in broad strokes here. But it, I mean it's pretty complicated. Yeah. Yeah. I mean if you're looking for the end all be all of how sugar is produced, then go watch an hour long video on YouTube.

What was it. I remember how, how incredibly complex chocolate making is. No talking.

Oh yeah. Geez I love all these. These are some of my favorite ones. Salt, sugar, coffee commodities. Yeah, the commodity. Sweet. Got a duty. We haven't done tea.

OK, and why. And we still haven't done wine yet. Yeah. That one that just bugs me. We've got a great offer from a nice guy. I don't have his name in my memory but I have his email in the same folder. Yeah. And he was like, you need some help with this stuff. I've got experts who are ready to talk to you about wine.

That that should be a suite. That's a dense, dense topic. All right. So sugarbeet. So let's talk about that in the process. OK, um, usually they're going to extract over the winter months between September and February. And as we said earlier, Sugarbeet is about 17 percent sugar. Yeah. So not too bad. Bang for your buck wise. You know, I mean, considering McCain is only 10 percent. Yeah, I mean, you could pick it up and eat it and be like, this is pretty sweet.

Oh, yeah. I guess 70 percent. If you're in Russia, you could yeah, that's true, that's their Reeses pieces, sugar beets, uh, start an international incident. Know things are tense right now, you know. Yeah. Between us and in Russia.

Yeah. It's like nineteen seventy seven again, all the kicking us out of the space station. I know Star Wars just came up. Uh, so if you're going to process sugarbeet you're going to slice it and you're going to put it in hot water, you're going to boil it and it's similar to sugar cane. They're going to make a sugary juice, then they're going to filter it, purify it, concentrate it, isolate those sugars, and eventually you're going to get sugar crystals developing.

Because he said that syrupy juice through what's called a centrifuge. And that's going to separate the crystal from what is known as the mother liquor, whatever is left, which is one of my favorite terms now, when whatever's left over, that's not crystal is mother liquor like byproducts in the original juice. And apparently that can be extracted a few times.

I would guess so to get all the crystals out of it. Yeah. And I think sometimes they need to add a little sugar dust to spur that crystallization. Wow. This sounds like a magical process.

It was mother liquor. There's a sugar dust. And actually, now that you bring up sugar dust, you know, do you remember down in Savannah, you're like twenty seven, twenty eight. That sugar refinery that exploded? Oh yeah. It was sugar that exploded. Oh, dust in the air. Yes. Sugar dust is particulate matter. Yeah. And when it gets into the air it can catch fire and explode. That's crazy. And it did.

It blew that place sky high. Yeah. When was that.

I wrote about it when I got here. So I would guess like 2007 or 2008. What was the article like. How can sugar explode. I think I remember seeing that. Yeah.

We should have touched on that.

I guess I just missed it.

But I mean like you should go back and check out that now that you realize that it was just sugar. Yeah. That blew the place up. It formed a crater, basically. It just blew the whole refinery.

I knew flour could do that, too, right.

Same principle. Yeah. Any particulate matter can do that. I think that's nutty. Yeah.

All right. So sugar cane, it's a very similar process.

They're going to pulverize the stock, add water and lime, and that's going to be your syrupy sweet juice and not lime like limestone.

Yeah, not like squeeze lime into it. I had to double check. No, you're right.

Because it's tropical, you know. Exactly.

And they're also going to run that through the centrifuge and you're going to get your mother liquor and your crystals. And that is also going to be washed and filtered and refined further until you get your sugary white goodness. Yeah. You know, evaporation is going on. It's it's it's one of the things that sounds complicated, but it's actually pretty simple, it's the same as when you're like making a simple syrup at home or boiling sugar and water.

It evaporates off and you're going to end up with something super sweet. Yeah. So, Chuck, there are byproducts to this whole process. Yeah. Essentially molasses is chief among them. Yeah, I never knew that. Yeah. It's a byproduct that comes from boiling sugar, right. Yeah.

I mean it's it's basically the. Yeah, it's it's the dark like that, that's what makes brown sugar dark or sugar in the raw dark as molasses, right. The molasses isn't extracted as much as it is with refined white sugar. Yeah. Refined white sugar has zero molasses in it. Like sugar in the raw has more and more. Yes, it's less refined. And then the greatest byproduct of molasses is of course rum. Yeah. Yeah.

I put a little molasses in my when I make my own barbecue sauce.

Oh yeah. It's good. Yeah it's nice.

Another byproduct is called bagasse and that is the pulp essentially of the cane. Are you making these words.

No, those are real words. OK, what mother liqueur and begats. But I guess we, I think another process we studied. Yeah. It's not, it's not central just to sugar, it's just the pulpy fibrous matter left over from this kind of process.

I wonder what we talked about that and that was a coffee.

Now maybe, maybe, maybe. But the bagasse is used is a big ask because I think I remember discussing whether the gas or buy gas.

It's the gas.

I listen to it today. OK, um, yeah, we definitely cover that before I'm starting to feel like an old man because when you when we have 700 topics or so. Oh yeah.

I literally vaguely familiar but yeah. Want to sound dumb so you don't say anything and they just spend the next week in your head going over this.

I'm telling you one day we were going to rerecord a show and not realise it man and we're going to hear about it.

Well what was it was crystal skulls. Well, we never release that one. Right.

But remember, I was like I thought for sure we recorded this.

Yeah. No dreams. Oh, yeah. It was we went to record dreams and we just it it just wasn't there. Yeah.

So I guess we definitely talked it out and but gas is a great byproduct because that can be used to power the sugar refinery. They actually burn that as fuel to create the steam used to power some of these machines. So that is one way that sugar production can be green. Um, however, mass production of anything like this isn't super green because they're transporting stuff over large distances and there's clearcutting of land. Well, that's a big one with with sugar.

Yeah. Deforestation like in the Amazon. Right.

And yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. So, uh. Even though they're using things like the gas is a byproduct to help power, why is that funny to you? Because I always hear buy gas in my head. OK. Any time you say it. But it is not a looked upon as one of the more green products that is used and produced.

You no like they have these baby lambs to really refine it to its widest.

That's not true.

Well it uses their souls at least, I guess if you want to get technical, the souls of baby lambs. Yeah. And then they're just left to wander the earth for the rest of their natural lives, like not feeling anything said.

You know, every year, Chuck, we hear people telling us to change something about ourselves. Well, me and he says, hey, you're great just the way you are. Why don't you just sit there, relax and stay cozy for a little while longer? Because it's been a rough year and it just so happens Chuck Biondi has the perfect way to stay cozy, don't they?

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So there's a lot of types of sugar there are when you think about sugar, especially here in the West, you think, oh, that really white like really pretty powdery granular stuff.

Yeah. And that's called table sugar. And that's what's known as sucrose. That's right. And sucrose is 50/50 glucose and fructose. Yes. Sucrose also apparently occurs naturally, but there's a lot of different types of sugar that you're going to find in plants and from some animals, too.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So cows, milk, sugar contains lactose and galactose. Yes. Both of which are sugars. Yeah. Um, sucrose again, typically table sugar. But I believe you can find that in plants and that's glucose and fructose. So you said. Yeah, and it's 50/50. Even one molecule glucose, one molecule fructose. Put them together. You got sucrose. That's right. Fructose is commonly found in fruits. Yeah. It's also found in honey.

Fructose is. Yeah. And then um glucose. This is the one you commonly think of when you think the body in sugar because glucose is what the body runs on.

And we'll talk about that a little more in depth in a little bit.

Yeah. And that's in honey and fruits and veggies. Yep. And then something called Zellous which I'd never heard of. That's in wood and straw.

It's pretty interesting. Yeah.

There's a sugar alcohol called Xyloto. Oh yeah. That's very sweet. Yeah. There's sugar alcohols and they supposedly circumvent your blood sugar, your normal metabolic blood sugar process.

So they taste sweet, but they don't have any impact on your blood sugar. And one of them's called Xyloto Xyloto. That's the name of the product. Yeah.

There's a Danish or Swedish gum that's like the best sugar free gum you can possibly get your hands on.

It's called xylitol. This is so good.

Terrible name, though. It is, but it's named after the sugar. Right. Which apparently is based on I guess it's probably wood, sugar, alcohol. Wow. Yeah, it's pretty creative. I didn't I'm just recounting here, so I didn't know you did.

Oh, you weren't complimenting me. No.

Uh, sugar comes in different granulation and from icing sugar, which is if you've ever heard of confectioners sugar that you daintily sprinkle on top of your, um.

What's it called, what did you get at the fair, your phone? Yeah, right. Those are so good. They are. I haven't had one a year, so they're good. I never like I don't indulge in that stuff.

Hey, what was going on, Chuck? Well, you know, I'm I'm overweight and like, it's there's just like you don't want to be the overweight guy walking up to the funnel cake stand, you know?

Well, that's why you sneak around the back, get someone else to go get it and you eat in the alley and cry. I've never done that. Now I avoid that stuff.

Ice cream is my big downfall. Oh, it's your ice cream. What's your favorite? Um, well, Ben and Jerry's sure like. But which one. Yeah. Chubby hubby. Oh it's a good one ironically. Yeah. Um, I got to tell you. Have you had BlueBell. Yeah. Okay. BlueBell is like the third best selling ice cream brand.

It tastes just like the country, but you can only get it in like seven states.

Oh, really? That's how good it is. Oh wow. And they have a banana pudding flavor. That is, if you're in Nevada and you can't, the closest you can get it is in Mississippi.

It's worth driving there for. And it's like eight bucks for like a gallon or a half gallon. Yeah, particularly expensive, but it is so good. All of their flavors are good, but their banana pudding one is like it's just I am about to cry. Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're radio commercials. Have you heard those. The songs. They're horrible. Oh it's the funniest stuff I've ever heard.

The TV version of it is even worse. Yeah.

It seems like a joke like are they serious or is this campy. Oh they're serious. Yeah.

It's like an eighty five year old like Baptist preacher is in charge of like their ads.

It's, it is, it's campy. It's so it's in they don't mean it. It is.

For those of you who don't know the songs it's literally like, you know, mama's bacon, the apple pie and putting the windowsill in like the picket fences outside. And we're eating bluebell ice cream because it tastes like the good old days. Right. It's really funny.

It rhymes more than that. But that's the gist of it. I'm sure it's on YouTube. Just type blue bell ice cream man. Yeah, it's good stuff. Um, man, that was a nice sidetrack. So then you got caster sugar, which is larger than powdered sugar. A bit smaller than granulated sugar. Yeah.

Which I didn't know about until like a couple of months ago. I don't remember what recipe it was, but there is a recipe that you me was making that like called for Caster Sugar. She was like, well yeah, both of us were. Yeah.

Apparently you can make it like with the coffee grinder, you can grind your regular sugar. Yes. She came across that. I think I finally found her.

She ordered it online or something like that, but she make it a meringue because there used a lot in meringues evidently. I don't remember.

Maybe I don't remember. She make you banana pudding.

Why did she do that for.

I'll figure it out on my own time and let everybody know in the next episode. How about that? Rather than all of us sitting here until I remember what there is and then I pick up the phone and call her. That's right. That's good radio, my friend.

Yeah. Uh, then you have your granulated sugar and this is your table sugar and then you've got preserving sugar, which looks sort of like sort of rock salty. It's chunkier. Or like sea salt. Right? Coarse sea salt. Sweeter than sea salt, though.

And that's used to preserve. Yes. Much sweeter. Yeah.

Because that's another property of sugar. It's a preservative as well. You can throw it in to some jam if you want to make it extra sweet, but it'll also keep the bacteria away at bay.

That's right. Which is by uh, like you said, simple syrup can last for so long. Yeah. You can just make that and put it on your bar at room temperature, right? Yeah, I can keep it in the fridge. But you, you keep it on hand. Make it yourself. Yeah. It's very easy.

Plus also if you like toss some lavender in there. Yeah. Lavender simple syrup which goes with anything with gin in it. Yeah. Oh it's so good. Um you can put in some like allspice and some aniseed and stuff like that. You use lemon verbena. No but I have made lemon like just from the the the peel. Oh yeah. Lemon verbena is like just the green leaf. We grow a lot of that in the herb garden and if you smash it up it smells so good.

Nice like I imagine would be good. Muddled in a drink. Yeah. If I was into that. Not. You know that I'm not into the cocktails I thought you were. Oh, whiskey over ice so you can jazz it up a little bit here. There. No, not me.

OK, so I guess we should talk a little bit about high fructose corn syrup.

We did a whole show on it. Yeah.

Which you can go back and listen to, but it bears mentioning here because there's a lot of it gets a bad rap and the evidence is sort of inconclusive right now. Yeah, yeah. I think what we determined is it's not necessarily any worse for you than sugar, but it's in a lot more stuff and you may not know it.

I don't remember what we concluded, what my understanding is at this point. And that was from 2009. Yeah. There's a really great article in The New York Times called Is Sugar Toxic. It's very long, but it's very in depth. And it really goes into the, um, the the evidence that's out there that it really is one of the highlights. Well, like you said, high fructose corn syrup isn't molecularly different, very much from sucrose, which is 50 50 sugar.

Yeah. Most high fructose corn syrup or the stuff that's most widely used is like 55 45 fructose to glucose. Right. OK, so that five percent difference in fructose shouldn't make much difference. Yeah, but apparently it does. The other aspect of high fructose corn syrup is that that extra fructose or all that 55 percent fructose that is processed in the liver, any cell in your body can process glucose. Right? When you eat something that has glucose in it, you eat your pancreas, releases insulin and insulin goes, hey, open up cells.

Yeah. And the glucose goes in and it's converted. It's biochemical energy is converted to ATP. And then you have this packet of energy that can be used by any cell, any cell can do that, which means your entire body can metabolize glucose. Fructose has to be broken down into glucose. Right. And that's done in the liver. Right. A liver has some options to it. Chuck. When it's presented with fructose, it can use it for energy.

Yeah, it can convert it into fats in the blood stream, which is called triglycerides. Yeah. Or it can convert it into fat stores.

Fat. Yeah, right. That's if you have too much of it, right. Yeah. Now with high fructose corn syrup, apparently evidence shows that when it hits the liver, it's just automatically converted to fat. Yeah. And that the speed with which it's metabolized also has an effect on how much or how frequently it's converted to fat. And with high fructose corn syrup, it's syrup and syrup apparently hits the liver a lot faster than, say, an equal amount of apples that you're getting fructose from.

Gotcha. So it's being converted to fat, like, automatically, OK? That's why they think that high fructose corn syrup is actually far worse from you than just regular fructose or even sucrose table sugar. Right. Well, the obesity epidemic is sort of matched year to year with the introduction of high fructose corn syrup. Yeah, as far as increase. So that makes sense.

Yeah, I read an article today that said that added sugars overall is the problem, whether it's high fructose corn syrup or regular added sugar.

Well, that's added sugars in a product.

That's the USDA's line in the USDA. Doesn't want to upset the sugar industry or the refiners association. So that's kind of become the predominant government line, like, yeah, everybody's eating too much sugar. That's the problem, right? Well, then there's a whole group of people out there who are saying like, no, it's yeah, sure. That's a problem. Right. But this is a an even bigger problem with high fructose corn syrup.

Yeah, that makes sense. That it's different and it's affecting people differently. Right. And it's not the same as sugar.

Well, I think a lot of people think. Ingesting too much corn based products, period. Sure. We need to do GMOs at some point to. You know, yeah, everyone keeps calling for it, some guys voted on it, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Did you read it? No, I read it.

Um, apparently 16 percent of Americans calories come from added sugars, which is just like totally empty calories.

So, again, there's there's a big there's an argument over those numbers. Yeah, sure. No one really knows. But supposedly the numbers are very artificially low, um, and that the average American eats about ninety five pounds of sugar a year.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Wow. And the global average is something like sixty six pounds, but Israel eats something like one hundred and forty five pounds really per person per year. I wonder what that's from sweets. Yeah.

See the blood sugar packaged foods. Yeah. Um are we done with HFC then. For now. Yeah. I go back and listen to the episode, it was a good one. One of my favorites. Yeah, it's been a while. I meant to listen to that, but I didn't get a chance to.

You know, and you're hanging out with some friends, you're putting back a few drinks, Chuck. I do know sometimes a few becomes a few too many, which is a thing. But as the evening comes to an end and people start to head out, you think of calling for a ride, right? Well, you should. Yeah, but a lot of people say now, you know, I live nearby. I can make it home. OK, it's not a big deal.

Well, it is a big deal. You know, what are the odds you're going to get pulled over anyway, you might say. And even so, what's the worst that could happen? Insurance might go up, might lose my license. Well, you could also lose your job or you could go to your car or you could kill someone. Yeah, everybody knows about the risks of driving drunk. The results are often tragic and deadly. However, that doesn't stop everybody from getting behind the wheel while under the influence.

It's why the police are out there right now looking for impaired drivers on our roads to save lives.

That's right. So if you think you're OK to drive after a few drinks, think again foul, play it safe and plan ahead to get a ride. It only takes one mistake to change your life or someone else's forever. Drive sober or get pulled over.

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Um, so sugar in the body, we've and this also harkens back to our episode on Taste, it corresponds molecularly on your with your taste buds on the tongue because of the shape of the molecule. We talked about that the molecules are shaped to fit. You know, when sugar hits it, it matches up perfectly with that molecule and sends a message that, hey, there's something sweet as opposed to salty or bitter or sour or umami.

The fifth, right.

This is four and then names five, which I thought was, you know, I even changed it on my sheet. Um, and they recommend something that I do not recommend, which is if something tastes sweet in the wild, it's more likely to be safe to eat than something better. Right? Sort of true. But you should never, ever go and and like in a survival scenario and just try and eat something even a little bit. There's a test you can do, which I won't get into, but it involves like rubbing on your skin first, waiting a certain amount of time.

It may be touching it to your tongue, waiting a certain amount of time, but you should never just go like I wonder if this is edible. Let me taste it. Right. It's not a good idea. Keep going. Even if it is sweet. You're a survivalist. I've done some things. So, you know, we said sugar is found in all plants just to varying degrees. Um, and plants create sugar is a byproduct of photosynthesis and they use it for energy, for growth.

They also use it to they take sugars and turn them into more complex sugars. Yeah. To use for like cellular structure, like cellulose. But they also use sugar in their nectar to attract bees and other things to help them pollinate. Yeah. And propagate their species. Because the sweet stuff. Yeah. I love it when I see the little baby getting in there getting a little something sweet. Yeah. I feel like there.

Get a little treat you know. That's right. And then they're vomiting it up and we eat it as honey that is true.

Uh sugar is bad for your teeth. Everyone knows that specifically when you eat sugar it's going to form something called a glycoprotein. That little sweater on your teeth and bacteria. Love to eat that stuff. Yeah. And then they love to poop out lactic acid afterward under your teeth.

Yes. Specifically streptococcus mutans. That's the culprit for cavities, really. We've said streptococcus before and that's not a good word. No, but there's different kinds of strep.

OK, um, but when they poop out that lactic acid, that's what's on your enamel. That's what's going to wear down your teeth. Right. So eating sugary stuff really is bad for your teeth. That's not like something your mom tells you. That's a lie.

No. And the bacteria also produces a biofilm around all of this stuff which traps it in there and traps in the lactic acid as well. So you're in trouble.

Yeah, you're dead.

Not dead, but you may get diabetes. Yeah, you can get diabetes from too much sugar, and that apparently is it's crazy that there's a real parallel between the the six countries study in the seven countries study that we talked about in the paleo diet.

Fats, apparently there was a rival all along that said it's not fat, it's sugar.

Like we're both after the same problem. But this guy went after fat. This other guy went after sugar. And now they're starting to think like now that they're thinking it's not fat after all that contributed to like heart disease and obesity that they think is actually sugar. Yeah. And the way that sugar is through something called metabolic syndrome, uh, to where if you eat too much sugar, your body becomes resistant to insulin. And remember, insulin gets glucose out of the bloodstream and into your cells and is converted to energy.

Right. Well, if your body starts sucking at doing that, then you have a lot more glucose in your bloodstream, which means your pancreas is producing more and more insulin. Right. Insulin, remember, triggers fat storage. Yeah. So you have more and more insulin. You have more and more fat storage, you have obesity, you have heart disease.

And they think that possibly the number one contributor to heart attacks is metabolic syndrome and not necessarily saturated fat.

Right. Interesting.

But as a result of this, a side result is insulin. You develop your diabetes. Type two diabetes is the result of insulin resistance where you have to inject insulin into your body because your body is not producing enough any longer because it's overtaxed, your pancreas.

Yeah, we got a lot of great responses from the paleo episode. It was really interesting. Yeah. And people saying, like dudes we know so little still about nutrition. Right.

And things are changing so much with the things we eat and put in our body that it's hard to keep up, which is why it's so insulting when some industry that has a vested interest in.

So they have got all figured out. Yeah. And don't worry about it. Just keep eating it.

You know, that's that's insulting.

Uh, all right. Can sugar power your car? Yes. How? I'll explain. There's a couple of ways. So there's a sugar based ethanol which Brazil was basically running on for many years. Yeah, I didn't realize that they're beginning to flex fuels and ethanol. They were basically energy independent in the first decade of the 21st century because they said we're tired of being dependent on foreign oil. Yeah, let's figure something out. And they did.

They put a lot of sense. They yeah, they they started looking into sugar cane, making ethanol from sugar cane. And, you know, there's like corn based ethanol, which.

Right. Chris and I talked about in the gasoline episode. Yeah, I remember that. And apparently ethanol made from sugar cane as 800 times more energy output. Yeah. And so they were making ethanol in it in eight. Fifty percent of the fuel sold in Brazil was ethanol. That's also made from sugar cane right there in the country. Well, then gas prices lowered and people started using gas again because they'll use whatever's cheapest. Right. But Brazil, even though it's on its heels, the ethanol industry there is they proved it's a completely viable alternative fuel.

Yeah.

The problem, though, again, with refining more and more sugar for these purposes is deforestation and worker wages. And I feel like any time we've covered any commodity like this, there's some worker somewhere in the world getting screwed over. Right. And sugar is definitely not any stranger to that process.

Well, also, it drives up food prices, too. Yeah. Because if if there's two different huge sectors competing for the same commodity, like it's going to drive the price of that commodity up. Yeah, that's true.

So if you have energy and food right after sugar prices, sugar goes up. Right. I wish people could have seen that demonstration really brings it home.

Uh, and what else is the other? I remember I think we talked about this to, uh, sugar devouring microorganisms. Yeah. Basically feeding on sugar and making energy in the process. Yeah. That's like viable, viable way in the future maybe to power things. Yeah.

So there's a certain certain types of microbes are more sugar hungry than others. Yeah. But yeah, when they're eating sugar they managed to separate electrons and loosing lucene electrons and the electrons flow. As we mentioned in our electricity episode, the flow of electrons is electricity. So if you direct that flow across like some something, they can use it. You create a current. Yeah. And the cool thing about microbial fuel cells is when that electron makes it to the other side, it combines to form water.

So that's the bio. So it truly is a very environmentally friendly alternative fuel. Yeah, we did. We covered that at some point, too. I remember.

Surely it's our world is getting smaller. Yeah, because we're explaining it. That's right.

Yeah. You got anything else? No, I don't think so.

Mother liquor, bagasse. All these words I made up just for the show.

You did good with the making the words man. Thanks. Yeah. I don't have anything else Chuck. Um, but if you want to learn more about sugar, I'm sure there's some words we left out of this article. You can type sugar into the search bar at HowStuffWorks dot com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.

I'm going to call this refuting listener mail.

We read listener mail from a creationist not too long ago. Man, that got a certain response from some quarters. Yeah. So then a lot of people.

Right, in responding to that listener Maltsev, we might just continue this for the next year. Just reading rebuttals.

Uh, hey guys, you receive an email from a creationist explaining that both creationists and scientists believe in natural selection and that both groups believe in microevolution but disagree on macroevolution. What the person did not mention is that macro and micro evolution describe the same process of natural selection just on different timetables, micro, short term, macro.

As long term. It simply does not make sense that natural selection works on the short term, but is somehow reversed on the long term.

Natural selection introduces changes to a population subgroup. They adapt to their environment. The changes are small. The population subgroup can naturally breed with the original population. That is microevolution. Once the changes are sudden, significant enough that the subgroup can no longer naturally and successfully breed with the parent population, the subgroup is considered a new species. That's a special event. That is macroevolution. To believe in micro and not macro is to ignore how nature works.

Say you put two separate populations of the same species put in very different environments.

Each population would slowly adapt to its new environment and change over time microevolution. Each group will become better adapted to its new environment, and the differences between the two groups will only grow in time. However, if you don't believe in macroevolution, you don't believe in new species. So you have to believe that no matter how different each group becomes, nature does not work like this. Also, the previous writer claimed to be a creationist botanist and that is like a doctor that does not believe in germ theory.

I'm sure they might exist, but I would definitely take their expertise with a large dose of salt.

Quite a rebuttal. Yeah, and I didn't have a name. I feel bad. So I'm just going to say thanks you.

Thanks, Richard Dawkins. Yeah, I appreciate that. So the evolutionists have rebutted.

What say you creationists let us know and everybody stop tweeting and sending emails about how dare we put a creationist views on and listener mail. Yeah. Yeah. We got way to go through life trying to silence your opponents. Yeah. You debate and engage.

I was surprised. There were a lot of people that said you shouldn't give equal time to this stuff because it's just not true. Yeah, somebody said I thought Discovery stood for something interesting. Yeah, well, hey, I think debate is healthy and they think you're not right either. So, like, you know. Yep. Debate is healthy. Check. Exactly.

If not, Bill Nye wouldn't have done it. Boom.

If you want to contribute to the debate, we want to hear from you. You can tweet to us as well as podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash step. You should know. Send us an email to Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks, dot com. And as always, check us out at our home on the web stuff you should know Dotcom.

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