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Is rice syrup healthier than white sugar?

Richard Cornish
Richard Cornish

What do experts say about white sugar?
What do experts say about white sugar?iStock

Is rice syrup healthier than white sugar? H. Coles

We don't normally do nutrition questions here but as there has been a swathe of new recipe books calling for white sugar substitutes we decided to go to the experts. Dr Alan Barclay is the chief scientific officer at the GI Foundation. He writes: "No. Rice syrup is not healthier than white sugar (sucrose). Rice syrup is composed of the sugars maltose (45 per cent), glucose (3 per cent), and maltotriose, which has a very high glycemic index, or GI, of 98, which is very high. Sucrose is 50 per cent glucose and 50 per cent fructose and has a moderate GI of 65. This means that rice syrup raises blood glucose levels more rapidly than sucrose. Rice syrup should be limited by people with diabetes or those at risk.

Both white sugar and rice syrup provide exactly the same number of kilojoules per gram but rice syrup is only about 70 per cent as sweet as sucrose. So if you wish to attain the same sweetness in recipes you have to use more rice syrup, thus increasing the kilojoule content." His book, The Ultimate Guide to Sugars & Sweeteners, is published by The Experiment, New York.

Does the colour of the egg yolk show the quality of the egg and how the chicken is raised? A. Masters

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When it comes to eggs many of us have a Platonic ideal of perfect chook farms with contented chickens frolicking in lush pasture all-year long, producing rich, golden yolks. This expectation has led to the egg industry satisfying our demand for deep-orange yolks by feeding chickens plant extracts that help colour the eggs. These extracts contain xanthophylls, the stuff that makes marigolds orange. It is also found in grass. It's extracted from plants and fed to chooks. Cage birds fed with colouring supplements may have deep-orange yolks year round. Eggs from free-range birds may reflect seasonal changes with lighter-coloured eggs when the pasture is in short supply.

How can I learn to love coriander? It tastes like soap! A. Creber

It's genetic. If you don't like coriander you probably have slightly different olfactory receptors that make the aromas of coriander unpleasant. You are not alone. According the scientific journal Nature, 21 per cent of east Asians, 17 per cent of people of European ancestry and 3–7 per cent of south Asians, Latin Americans and Middle Eastern people do not like the taste of coriander. It seems to be a long-standing genetic trait; the word "coriander" comes from the Greek koris, meaning "bed bug", as some ancients compared the herb to clothes infested with bed bugs.

We were watching a history documentary on cable television the other night and there was a reference to door-mice? What are they?

I love cable history documentaries; their animations always look as if they were done by the people who did Minecraft, with re-enactments styled by my year 10 drama teacher. Door-mice are actually dormice and the singular is dormouse. We get the word from Anglo-Saxon dormeus or "the sleepy one". They are small rodents that gorge themselves during summer and autumn then hibernate in the cold months. They were trapped at their plumpest and then cooked, often in vinegar and honey. Think rich rabbit agrodolce.

Send your vexing culinary conundrums to brainfood@richardcornish.com.au or tweet to @Foodcornish

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Richard CornishRichard Cornish writes about food, drinks and producers for Good Food.

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