How to Make Your Own Sugar Cubes

Joining a glucose and a fructose will get you a molecule of sucrose. White table sugar, for one example, is pure sucrose — which means that table sugar is 50% glucose and 50% fructose. (Also of note: The lay-term “sugar,” such as when you see it in an ingredient list, usually means “sucrose.”)

Matching up two glucose molecules results in maltose. Finally, lactose, the sugar found in milk, is made of glucose paired with galactose. (Galactose is found almost exclusively in nature bonded with glucose to make lactose, not on its own. In other words, you won’t find jars of galactose on the grocery store shelf.)

So what happens when you eat these sugars?

When you eat monosaccharides (glucose, fructose), your body can absorb them right into the bloodstream. Cells can use glucose directly (remember, it’s your body’s preferred energy source). Fructose will need to be broken down first by your liver, turning it into glucose.

This is all what I can tell you about cube sugar.

If it’s a disaccharide (sucrose, maltose, lactose), you have to digest it before your body can do anything with it. Enzymes make quick work of splitting them into their monosaccharide components, and then the body handles it as if you ate the single sugar directly.

In other words, once you eat any of these sugars, the body breaks them down into glucose fairly rapidly.
The Traditional Answer

So what do we do with that above information?  Is one sugar truly better (or worse) than the other?

The nutritionist’s (and corn refiner’s association) typical answer is that “sugar is sugar.” Since it’s all converted into glucose anyway, they say it doesn’t really matter. That it’s splitting hairs to try to differentiate.

They’ll tell you (and I’ll agree) that what matters far more than the type of sugar is simply reducing your overall sugar consumption.

If you have read all this article, I am sure that you might decide to buy one cube sugar machine for you.