zeppo, 1 year ago

Thanks, but it’s not hyperbole. Vegetable starch is, as noted, only a chain of glucose molecules. It takes 1 chemical step to turn into glucose - breaking the bonds. The only thing faster is pure glucose or maltodextrin. Sucrose is a disaccharide consisting of glucose+fructose. It takes a two-step process. The glucose is absorbed, but fructose takes a much longer pathway through the liver.

There’s a dietary concept called ‘glycemic index’ which ranks foods on how fast they are absorbed into your blood stream. It’s moderated by fat, protein, and fiber content in meals, but still it’s worth looking at the basic food items. I had a hard time finding good charts that listed not only prepared foods but included sugar and starches, but check out this chart for example, or this one. Observe how on both lists, sucrose is in the upper middle, 60ish, while potatoes, corn, rice and wheat are among the highest around 100, second only to glucose and maltodextrin.