Brown sugar is granulated sugar in the early stages of refinement.
Maple sugar is obtained by boiling down the sap of the maple tree. It is often adulterated with other sugars or with glucose, because they are cheaper. This adulteration does not make it unwholesome, but when mixed with these it loses its distinct, maple taste and is more mild.
Before sugar can be used by the human system, it is changed into grape sugar, or dextrose, (another form of sugar) by a ferment in the small intestine called lactose. Milk sugar needs less chemical change than other sugars and is taken almost at once into the circulation.
When an excess of sugar is consumed, it is stored within the body as glycogen, until required.
Sugar is perhaps a better food than starch, because less force is required for its digestion and it is easily assimilated, being more readily converted into dextrose than are starches. Moreover it furnishes the needed heat and energy to organisms that have no power to digest starch. Milk sugar is a part of the natural food for the infant, because the infant has not developed the ferment necessary for starch digestion.
Sugar may be oxidized within a few minutes after eating, and, for this reason, it is eaten by those who require to use an undue amount of muscular strength. It yields heat and energy within thirty minutes after eating and, in times of great exertion or exhausting labor, the rapidity with which it is assimilated gives it advantage over starch. Used in limited quantities, therefore, according to the muscular or brain power exercised, sugar is one of the best foods for the production of energy. Where much sugar is eaten less starch is required.
It is also said to prevent fatigue, a man being able to do seventy-five per cent more muscular work with less fatigue after consuming about seventeen and one-half ounces of sugar dissolved in pure water.
It might be inferred from the above, that starches could be discarded and replaced by sugars, but a small quantity of sugar soon surfeits the appetite and if the foods were confined to those with a surplus of sugars, sufficient food would not be eaten for the needs of the body. This lack of appetite, occasioned by an excess of sugars, is due, partly, to the fact that the gastric juice is not secreted as freely when there is much sugar in the stomach.
Because of the slower secretion of gastric juice and the surfeit of the appetite, sweetened foods are not used at the beginning of a meal, and, while a moderate amount of sugar is desirable, a surfeit is to be deplored.
While sugar is not converted into fat, it is so readily oxidized and thus supplies heat and energy so promptly that the starches and fats are not called upon until the latent energy in the sugar is used. Those who wish to reduce in flesh should eat it sparingly that the starches and fats may be called upon to furnish energy, but sugar should be as freely used as the system can handle it, by those who wish to build up in flesh.