Well if the sugar is ultra-processed, yes it does, doesn't it?
No, it does not, since ultra-processed, though not a strictly defined term, does not include household ingredients like granulated sugar or brown sugar. If you happen to have a jar of HFCS in your cabinet then that would quality.
Well then it is a worthless term. Both granulated sugar and HFCS are processed foods. Corn syrup is a household ingredient. No idea why you think a bit higher percentage of fructose changes anything.
Corn syrup and high-fructose corn syrup are two different ingredients, although they share some words. One is 100% glucose and the other also contains fructose (usually 42% or 55% fructose), produced by chemically altering the corn syrup. We process glucose and sucrose differently and it affects taste, satiation, digestion, and more. I agree that the terminology is useless, by institutional intention.
> chemically altering the corn syrup.
And where does corn syrup come from? From squeezing corn? The sugars in corn don’t start as glucose either (they’re starches).
Besides, at home, bakers easily make “HFCS” themselves by adding any weak acid to table sugar to make invert sugar (an HFCS 50 equivalent).
> We process glucose and sucrose differently
Tell that to some southerners about their sweet tea. This simple distinction isn’t that metabolically interesting for day to day life (or explaining the prevalence of obesity and metabolic syndromes). Concentrations in a serving and mode of delivery are far more important. You can pretty easily get metabolic syndrome from excess glucose as well as sucrose. Altering smell and moisture content are more impactful variables.
Sucrose readily hydrolyzes to glucose and fructose via sucrase in the small intestine, it and HFCS become equals (no, Mexican coke isn’t healthier you dumb hipsters, just eat a piece of fruit already). If it wasn’t you’d get massive diarrhea from eating it. So sucrose vs HFCS isn’t nearly as distinct.
> and it affects taste, satiation, digestion, and more.
The most important distinctions go beyond the relative concentrations of the simple sugars. A fresh fruit doesn’t have the same insulin spiking and metabolic syndrome inducing potential as plain Karo syrup or a (Mexican) Coke, even though its relative percentage of fructose is higher or similar.
it's pretty processed compared to sugarcane at least
So homemade bread is ultraprocessed because the wheat was processed into flour?
From what I understand, technically yes.
I think there’s a lot of work to be done on categorisation but the underlying principle tends to be fairly decent: the more stuff you do to your raw ingredients, the less healthy they become.
No, homemade bread would be NOVA group. 3. The flour itself is group 2 (processed culinary ingredients.) Mixing the group 2 ingredient (flour) with group 1 ingredients (water, yeast, salt) and baking it makes it group 3 (processed food.)
If you added something like Xanthan Gum to your "homemade bread", that would make it group 4 (ultra processed foods.)
Thanks for the correction!
Homemade bread is a processed food, not an ultra processed food.
You can process wheat into flour at home. You cannot process sugar cane into table sugar without an industrial plant.
>You can process wheat into flour at home. You cannot process sugar cane into table sugar without an industrial plant.
That statement seemed off, so I poked around a little and, yes you can make granulated sugar from sugar cane at home[0].
[0] https://shuncy.com/article/how-to-make-sugar-from-sugarcane-...
>You cannot process sugar cane into table sugar without an industrial plant.
That's obviously false.
The refined sugar you buy in the store ('table sugar') is clarified with phosphoric acid and bleached using a number of other chemicals. In addition to this, it goes though a number of other industrial processing steps that you would not be able to perform at home. Hence, it is 'highly processed'.
So you can make it at home using scary chemicals that you can easily buy online. You can't just say 'industrial processing' and 'chemicals' and be believed.