Jul 27, 2026 · 15 min · 10 segments
Send us Fan Mail Join us for a crucial discussion on the fundamental differences between glucose and fructose, and their profound impact on your…
Urban A. KiernanHostMichaelGuestAnd

The primary source of glucose, which is a six-carbon sugar in our diet, comes from the consumption of starches.

Sometimes they're linear, sometimes they're branched, made up of simple glucose units that as we... consume them they get broken into single units monosaccharides in that particular case it's glucose and then that enters you know your um it goes into the cell via insulin okay and then that enters the glyco uh glycolytic pathway or glycolysis excuse me and then from there the the peruvates that are generated enter the kreb cycle and your body's able to make energy So everybody's familiar with the concept that glucose is necessary for energy.



Glucose, as you can see from the picture, makes a hexagonal ring, a six carbon ring.

So structurally they're very, very different and therefore they end up metabolizing very different because there is geometry involved in terms of interaction with enzymes and everything.

So fundamentally since the shape is different, literally you're taking square peg, trying to pound it into a round hole.
goods.
I keep my coffee black, but I get the

You go into a restaurant, either the packets or the whole container is there.
disaccharide.
And

The primary source of glucose, which is a six-carbon sugar in our diet, comes from the consumption of starches.

Sometimes they're linear, sometimes they're branched, made up of simple glucose units that as we... consume them they get broken into single units monosaccharides in that particular case it's glucose and then that enters you know your um it goes into the cell via insulin okay and then that enters the glyco uh glycolytic pathway or glycolysis excuse me and then from there the the peruvates that are generated enter the kreb cycle and your body's able to make energy So everybody's familiar with the concept that glucose is necessary for energy.



Glucose, as you can see from the picture, makes a hexagonal ring, a six carbon ring.

So structurally they're very, very different and therefore they end up metabolizing very different because there is geometry involved in terms of interaction with enzymes and everything.

So fundamentally since the shape is different, literally you're taking square peg, trying to pound it into a round hole.
goods.
I keep my coffee black, but I get the

You go into a restaurant, either the packets or the whole container is there.
disaccharide.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.