[dbcurtis]

It all ends up as glucose. If you eat glucose, it goes straight into your blood stream as glucose. If you eat fructose, it gets converted into glucose. If you eat starches, the polymers are chopped into simple sugars of glucose and fructose, and the fructose is converted to glucose. Whether you eat glucose directly, or eat other sugars and starches, it all ends up as glucose. The only difference is the workload that you create for your liver.

[wolco]

How it gets converted is the key not what it ends up as. One type will be easier to breakdown another more difficult. That's the key.

[dbcurtis]

Sorry, that makes little sense to me. The extra calories burnt in conversion to glucose is not going to be enough to cause weight loss. Any glucose that your body does not immediately consume gets converted to lipids and stored.

Show me the chemistry. Show me how sugar in a raisin is somehow significantly fewer net calories of glucose than just eating the equivalent in refined cane sugar or wheat flour. Sure, it takes a small amount of energy to reduce other sugars to glucose, but I can't see how it can be enough to make a difference in a weight loss diet.

[wolco]

One aspect is speed.

Eat white sugar you will quickly get an energy boost but whatever cannot be used will be stored.

Eat a complex carb and it requires more steps to breakdown. That allows for a slower release of energy and less of a need to store.

The digestive system is a pipeline of processes.