Sugar comes in a variety forms--sucrose, fructose, glucose, high fructose corn syrup, turbinado, white and brown sugar. If you're reading food labels, it can be confusing to determine where it comes from and how to tell the difference between them. Sucrose and fructose sound the same, and are both sweeteners.
About Sugar
Sugar is a carbohydrate that occurs naturally in fruits and vegetables. It's obtained from sugar beets and cane sugar through a process that extracts the liquid from the plants, and then is filtered and concentrated into a crystalized form. Added sugar is any sweetener that's added to a food product.
Sucrose
Sucrose is white table sugar, made up of glucose and fructose. This "regular" sugar comes in fine, superfine, coarse, powdered, fruit, confectioners and baker's sugar; it's broadly known as granulated sugar. The baker's, fine and ultrafine sugar are used in baking. The fruit sugar is used in gelatin and dry mixes. The confectioners and powdered sugar is ground into a smooth powder for use in frosting and whipping cream.
Fructose
Fructose is a sugar found in fruit, honey and fruit juice. Together with glucose, it makes up sucrose. You can buy it in a similar form as sucrose at a supermarket for cooking and baking. Fructose is much sweeter than sucrose, so you can use less to achieve the same amount of sweetness with fewer calories. Fructose does not cause a significant change in blood sugar levels, as sucrose does.
High-Fructose Corn Syrup
High-fructose corn syrup is made from the glucose found in corn starch. The process of changing glucose to fructose is more economical than using sugar. When this is added to the wide variety of packaged foods available in our supermarkets, it helps increase their shelf life.
Reading Labels
The Food and Drug Administration requires sucrose be listed in the ingredients on a food label by its common name, sugar. Fructose, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup and other sweeteners aren't put into that same category. The ingredients are listed in descending order by amount, and the label does not distinguish between sugars that naturally occur in food and those that are added.
Considerations
The American Heart Association recommends limiting the amount of added sugars to 6 tsp. daily for women and 9 tsp. for men. This is equal to the amount of sugar you would find in one can of soda. Because sugar doesn't provide any nutritional value, loading up on excess empty calories increases your risk of weight gain, obesity and heart disease.
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