Uncovering Hidden Sugar in Your Food

1. Uncovering Hidden Sugar in Your Food Sucrose Formula Which is the Good One?? Glucose Formula

2. What is the difference between Sucrose and Glucose ?? Glucose Glucose is essential to the existence of the humans and plants. We can find glucose in the human body and also in plants. Plants have glucose in the nectar which is about 90% glucose. Sucrose Sucrose, on the other hand, is a totally different thing because in very simple words, its table sugar. What I mean by table sugar, it’s the sugar that we put in coffee as well as in baking and cooking. The problem with sucrose is that it has chemicals that are not good for you because sucrose is made up of a glucose molecule and other chemicals. For example, if you eat often at McDonald’s, their foods contain a lot of sucrose. You will probably end up being obese or have diabetes, or worse, you may get a blood clot which is more commonly referred to as a heart attack.

3. Why I did this experiment I did this experiment for the simple reason because too many babies are becoming overweight and more kids are getting diabetes. For example, did you know that from 2006 to 2008, 227 new cases of type 2 diabetes were diagnosed in Canadian children? That is why I’m doing this experiment to try and help those kids to help prevent this from happening. Diabetes is a disease that affects how the body uses glucose which is the main type of sugar in the blood. The glucose level in the blood rises after a meal and tells the pancreas to make a hormone called insulin and to release it into the bloodstream. Insulin tells the cells to let the glucose enter so it works like a key opening a door. But in people with diabetes, the body can't make insulin properly so the glucose stays in the bloodstream which means that the level of sugar is too high. This can be a problem because it can cause health issues such as diabetes.

6. Materials • Disposable cups, at least 8 oz • Glucose tablets with 4 g of glucose per tablet • Water • Graduated cylinder (100 milliliter [mL] volume) • Diastix glucose test strips for urinalysis (at least 60Kitchen measuring spoons, half-teaspoon and tablespoon • Timer • Sucrose (6 g) • Scale, 6 g • A digital scale accurate to at least 1 g • LorAnn Oils Invertase (1 oz ) • Bottle caps (at least 5) • Foods to test (must be in liquid or mushy form ) • Medicine dropper • Lab notebook

7. Procedures: How it was done !

12. Results My results show that the company Heinz is not lying about the amount of sucrose in the baby food because none is added. Graph 1: Linear time point

13. Graph 1: Linear time point (con’t) I first put water in a cup and added sugar. Then I added the enzyme and recorded my results every 5 minutes. After 40 minutes, I recorded every 10 minutes. As can you see at 80 minutes the glucose concentration reached the linear time point. The linear time point is when the results are the same and at this point the enzyme is no longer breaking down sugar to glucose. The first step was to determine the linear time point. I did this in order to figure out how long the enzyme is active. From the graph, the maximum glucose concentration is 1.4%. I took the time when the concentration was half of this (0.7%). This is when the enzyme is still very active as you can see from the continued upward slant of the line. This time was about 36 minutes. So in my experiments to measure sucrose in baby food, I will wait 36 minutes after the enzyme is added before taking the glucose concentration.

14. Graph 2: Amount of Glucose Blue= 0 minutes without enzyme Red = 36 minutes with enzyme* *enzyme turns sucrose into glucose I took the baby food and put it in water and diluted it by the number that is marked in the table. Then I waited 36 minutes and took a reading. I did it again to make sure that the test was sufficient and if the enzyme worked.

15. Graph 3: Retest of Amount of Glucose I did the re-test to see if my enzyme was working properly. If I would have not done this step I was at risk that the enzyme would have been inactive but as shown on the graph, the enzyme worked beautifully. Blue= 0 minutes without enzyme Red = 36 minutes with enzyme

16. Graph 4: Enzyme Test I added ¼ of a teaspoon to the water to make sure my test strips are accurate. This test was done just to make sure the enzyme is in fact working and that the lack of increase in glucose was not because of the enzyme was no longer working. Blue = 0 minutes with ¼ TSP sugar Red = 36 minutes with ¼ TSP sugar

17. Conclusion In conclusion, I have been able to prove that the amount of sucrose the Heinz Company say they “don’t add sugar” is in fact true. By adding the invertase enzyme, any added sucrose would have been converted to glucose. So if sugar is added to the formulas then I should see a sharp increase in glucose concentration 36 minutes after the enzyme is added. Since the bars look pretty much even at time point zero, I can conclude that there is no additional sucrose added to the baby food. From what the package said and what my data showed, they were extremely similar. But some other company may be lying so I would recommend young parents to read labels carefully. The amount of kids suffering of diabetes is increasing dramatically and food companies need to be truthful about what they advertise in their products. Fruit is known to have higher levels of glucose but this doesn’t mean that it’s bad. Since glucose is a naturally occurring sugar, I would not recommend this food to babies that may have problems with their pancreas or have juvenile diabetes. Beef and vegetables have the least amount of glucose, so this might be a better option as it wouldn’t cause spikes in blood glucose levels. Finally, I would recommend parents to buy baby food from the company Heinz because they are not lying about the amount of sucrose in it and also the price is about $1.65 per jar which isn’t too expensive. I also the tasted the food and it wasn’t so bad. However, other food companies may not be so truthful about how much sucrose is in their foods which means that more people are going to become overweight and will be at risk of getting diabetes and have other heath issues.

18. References Rock Space Hosting . Science Bodys- Sucrose & Glucose & Fructose, Oh My! Uncovering Hidden Sugar in Your Food. unknowunknow 2002-2013. unknowoctober 2013 <http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/HumBio_p035.shtml#summary>. CTV News. Type 2 diabetes on the rise among children: report. 25 March 2010. 2013. —. Type 2 diabetes on the rise among children: report. 25 March 2013. 22 November 2013 <http://www.ctvnews.ca/type-2-diabetes-on-the-rise-among-children-report-1.495777>. Kids Heath . Type 2 Diabetes: What is it? unknowunknow 1995 - 2013. 24 November 2013 <http://kidshealth.org/parent/medical/endocrine/type2.html>.