Dietary sugars and human disease : report of the Panel on Dietary Sugars, Committee on Medical Aspects of Food Policy.

  • Great Britain. Panel on Dietary Sugars
Date:
1989
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Dietary sugars and human disease : report of the Panel on Dietary Sugars, Committee on Medical Aspects of Food Policy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    glucose syrups and fructose which is increasingly used by itself as a sweetening agent and is prepared commercially by conversion from glucose produced by hydrolysis of starch.” 2.5 There have been many attempts to group dietary sugars; biochemically (monosaccharides, disaccharides, hexoses, pentoses, etc); in manufacturing terms (added, natural); in physical terms (extracellular, intracellular); or in dietetic and physiological terms. The last provides a more useful framework for the consumer, but is necessarily more complex in order to avoid misleading groupings. For instance honey though ‘natural’ acts as any concentrated solution of the simple sugars glucose and fructose. Milk sugar (lactose) is ‘natural’ and extracellular but neglibly cariogenic. Sugars in fruit juices are also ‘natural’ and extracellular, but have different cariogenic potentials and are more rapidly absorbed than those in intact fruit. We have attempted to produce a logical and comprehensive classification without inconsistencies for this Report which future workers may find useful. One disadvantage is that previous dietary studies used a variety of different classifications which are not immediately comparable. 2.6 It is helpful to distinguish sugars naturally integrated into the cellular structure of a food (intrinsic) from those which are free in the food or added to it (extrinsic). This difference in physical location influences their availability for bacterial metabolism in the mouth and the readiness with which they are absorbed after ingestion. The speed with which sugars consumed in the diet become available to the tissues of the body influences some of the metabolic responses to their ingestion, a question considered later in this Report. These availability classes have been defined as follows. 2.6.1 Intrinsic sugars Sugars forming an integral part of certain unpro- cessed foodstuffs, ie enclosed in the cell, the most important being whole fruits and vegetables (containing mainly fructose, glucose and sucrose). 2.6.2 Extrinsic sugars Sugars not located within the cellular structure of a food. Milk sugars Sugars occurring naturally in milk and milk products (almost entirely lactose) are extrinsic sugars but the Panel considered them a special case so that they form a separate sub-group. Non-milk extrinsic sugars Includes fruit juices and honey and ‘added sugars’ which comprise recipe and table sugars. (i) Recipe sugars Includes sugars that are added to composite dishes and confections. Recipes and formulations have a characteristic content of sugars, modification of which beyond certain limits results in a different product. Amounts of sugars in different recipes and products range from negligible (eg glazings) to providing 100 per cent of the food energy (eg ‘boiled sweets’). Foods richest in recipe sugars include preserves, many )