Sucrose & Glucose & Fructose
Oh My! Uncovering Hidden Sugar in Your Foods
Problem & Hypothesis
Problem
Investigating how an enzyme converts sucrose into glucose and how this changes the amount of glucose we digest from different foods.
Hypothesis
In this project, I know that i will be experimenting on the hidden sugars in food. I’m thinking that when I experiment on the different foods, that then somehow the sugars will appear. This will allow me to see how much sugar is really used in the food. I will be able to see the glucose and sucrose which are hidden within the foods.
The Independent Variable / Constant / Results and Conclusion
The Independent Variable & Constant
~The Independent Variable and constant in this project is the water which contains the glucose tablets. This is because the water never changes and is needed to perform the experiment.
The Dependent Variable
~The Dependent Variable in this project is the food that is being tested.
Control
~The control is the invertase being used. The invertase determines how long it takes it to turn a known amount of sucrose into glucose.
Results:
When observing how long it took the water with sucrose in it to glucose, I realized that it didn’t take long for activity to take place. After testing the foods with the invertase I realized that certain foods were loaded with glucose! In the experiment we tested Regular Maple Syrup(>2%glucose), Turkey Hill Butter Pecan Ice-Cream
(> 2%glucose), Gerber Apple Baby Food(> 2%glucose), and Mountain Dew
(> 2%glucose). We tested all of these foods with glucose strips. After adding the Invertase, it showed which foods had different levels of glucose: Regular Maple Syrup(1/4%), Turkey Hill Butter Pecan Ice-Cream(1/2%), Gerber Apple Baby Food(2<%), Mountain Dew (2%).
Conclusion:
In this project I learned that different foods contain different amounts of glucose. The thing that really shocked me was, that Baby Food contained so much Glucose and sucrose. This made me wonder, why are we feeding our babies this much glucose, isn’t it unhealthy? But then I thought, If you read the nutrition facts on the baby food most of it is natural sugars. The Ice-Cream and the Maple Syrup contained low levels of glucose. So we see that some foods are loaded with just sucrose and low in glucose, some high in sucrose and glucose, and some are just loaded with glucose and low in sucrose.