Pops wrote:It says the portion of cellulose not converted to amylose converts to glucose.
The thing that is different with this as far as food goes, is other cellulose conversions attempt to make 100% glucose: simple sugar, that can be fermented into ethanol. This process on the other hand makes amylose, which is the stable half of starch and that is important because starch is the basis of the carbs we eat the most; rice, wheat, potatoes. Because it's long chain structure is sticky and resistant to water and mild heat, amylose is the half of starch that makes flour thicken yer gravy and pudding and hold your crackers and other baked stuff together.
And that is important because it can substitute for other food ingredients such as flour and corn starch that glucose from other cellulose processes can't. If this were ever cheap enough it could also replace some of corn derived HFCS. ("corn syrup" is 100% di- and poly- saccharide glucose that's had some portion converted to fructose because fructose is sweeter)
I'm no chemist or biologist so some or all of that may be wrong and I'll be happy to be corrected.
Sort of. Corn Syrup is made by heating corn starch and treating it just a small amount to form a liquid mess which is then filtered to get the remaining starch out for reprocessing. The first stage corn syrup is mostly Glucose, a Monosaccharide, with some Maltose, a Disaccharide made from two Glucose molecules stuck together and a few percent of Polysaccharides with 3 to 6 Glucose molecules stuck together shorter than Starch. If the food label just says Corn Syrup this is the stuff they are talking about. High Fructose Corn Syrup is made by taking some of this Glucose syrup and processing it chemically into Fructose by altering the chemical structure. The Fructose is them mixed back into regular Corn Syrup in either 55%/45% or 44%/56% ratio of Fructose to Glucose depending on how sweet the end user wants it to be. Table sugar, Sucrose, is a Disaccharide made from 50% Fructose bound to 50% Glucose. Fructose is very sweet, in its powdered form it is about 25% sweeter than Sucrose and 100% sweeter than pure Glucose powder, that is why they process corn syrup to make it into Fructose. If you want to sweeten something like soda or lemonade and you need 1 cup of table sugar for a pitcher (2 Liters) you only need 3/4ths of a cup of Fructose but you would need 1+1/2 cup of Glucose.
Unfortunately most of the cells in your body can not process Fructose very well. Even the cells in your digestive tract do not pass it into your blood very quickly, it takes three times as long to absorb Fructose as it does to absorb Glucose. Both are absorbed more quickly when they are mixed together as HFCS or Sucrose/table sugar. The problem with Fructose is only two kinds of cells deal well with it once it is in your blood stream, Liver and Kidney cells. Almost all other cells lack the receptors to allow them to absorb Fructose directly, while every cell in your body absorbs Glucose. This means that any Fructose in your diet beyond what you would get naturally from eating a few pieces of ripe fruit puts a lot of extra stress on your Liver and Kidneys. If you have been exercising or fasting before you take in Fructose your Liver cells will convert part of it to Glucose to rebuild your storage and part of it into fat for longer term storage. If you have not been exercising enough to deplete your glucose(glycogen) stores then nearly all of the Fructose will be converted into fat for long term storage. A lot of biochemists now agree that excess fructose in the western diet is a huge influence on obesity and fatty liver disease. Fatty liver disease is very similar to Cirrhosis which takes place when your liver has to convert Ethanol into Glucose.
So the high points, Corn Syrup is 90% monosaccharide Glucose, HFCS and table sugar Sucrose are about half Glucose and half Fructose. Too much Glucose makes you diabetic. Too much Fructose makes you fat. Too much HFCS or Sucrose causes about 30% of the population to become fat or diabetic or both. 20% of diabetics are skinny, 30% of fat people never have blood sugar problems or diabetes. Any food that has Carbohydrates in it greater than the Fiber content is broken down by your digestive system into simple sugars (monosaccharides) meaning Glucose, Fructose, Galactose. These are either used directly for cell metabolism, stored in Liver and skeletal muscle as Glycogen, or converted into Fat for long term storage. The lower a Diabetic keeps their dietary carbohydrate intake the easier it is for them to maintain a stable blood sugar level.
Converting Cellulose to Starch would be good for two things, feeding people who are not diabetic and feeding biofuel producers. You could also use it to feed livestock, the reason grass fed beef grow slower and fatten less is they don't digest much of their food compared to grain fed beef. Give them treated cellulose starch and they will fatten up just like they would eating grain, because just like humans starch digests easily into glucose and excess food converts to fat storage.