On Tue, 20 Apr 1999, Ray Audette wrote:

        But the refined sugar does contain things that in nature
        would not be eaten.  Proteins from the source plant do
        find their way into the final product (refining them out
        completely would be prohibitedly expensive.  This would
        include grass proteins from the sugar cane, or beet
        proteins from sugar beet.

Since sugar cane can be chewed raw for its sugary sweetness, this
particular protein must be considered "paleo".  The grass is not
completely chewed and swallowed, of course, but it is chewed
enough so that a small amount of protein would be ingested.  It
is rather comparable to drinking tea, which you allow.  Brewing
the tea certainly leeches some proteins into your teacup, but
nobody ever actually ate tea leaves.  They may have chewed them,
however.

        Of course, sugar in this concentration would never be
        found in nature.  Even the sweetest fruits contain highly
        diluted sugars - that's why we don't extract sugars from
        them except in the form of fruit-juice concentrates.

In what concentration, as in a can of Pepsi or a serving of
bacon?  We were speaking of the latter.  A serving of bacon
contains less than a gram of sugar.  An orange contains over five
grams of sucrose.  If you were thinking of something like the
Pepsi, which has about 35g of sugar, then I agree that it is
difficult to find this concentration in nature.

        Thanks to government policy in the U.S., most food
        products are sweetened with corn fructose.

True, but this is not true of bacon, which is not "sweetened"
but cured with sugar.

Todd Moody
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