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A heated discussion - sugar is dangerous, we eat too much sugar, all processed food contains dangerous sugar and much more. There is of course a lot of truth in all these warnings but this does not mean that all sugar is bad and should be removed. Sugar is not only the white table sugar but also the thing that gives flavour, consistency, air and colour to our food. Sugar is the component that is bringing life to much of what we eat. During 24 hours I gave myself the task to find sugar in Chicago…

Steakhouse Dinner

I get a nice brown colour on my steak and fries, due to the Maillard sugar reaction. The reaction is used in almost all our cooking. Together with my steak am having a glass of dry red wine. The alcohol in the wine would not be there unless there had been some fructose and glucose sugars in the grapes, consumed by the yeast during fermentation. My chocolate mousse dessert contains added sugar, which removes the bitterness of the cacao.

 

Good Morning

A nice yoghurt with granola. The caramelization of sugar has created a crisp and sweet granola. Without natural lactose sugar in milk there would be no yoghurt, since bacterias has nothing to eat. Lactose is needed and consumed during fermentation.

Bread Along the Way

Sugar plays and important role in the texture of bakery products and without it our bread would be very different. Sugar promotes lightness in the bread by forming air cells, which helps the leavening agents. Sugar also helps the texture in bakery products by slowing down gelatinization and preventing overdevelopment of gluten. In foam-type cakes, sugar interacts with egg proteins to stabilize and make it more elastic.

Ice Cream in the Theatre District

Walking in the Chicago theatre district, eating a nice ice cream. There is added sugar in the ice cream but not only to get it sweet but also to get a pleasant texture. Sugar attracts and holds water which allows smaller ice crystals to form in a frozen dessert. No sugar would result in a grainy ice cream. 

Ending My Day with Some Really Sweet stuff

Sugar factory in Chicago…sweets contains some sugar…
Ending my day in Chicago and going back to Sweden. 

 

 

Please follow what I and my team are doing at OPSIS Liquid Monitoring, bringing new technology that can measure sugar to producers and factories around the world.