Https://wiki.ubc.ca/Course:VANT149/2024/Capstone/Science/Team32

Imitates the process of corn syrup being absorbed into the bloodstream.

Bio for Shiqi Wang: Shiqi Wang is the first-year science student in UBC Vantage. She is interested in neuroscience, food nutrition and Kinesiology. Her thesis addresses how bad sugar affects individuals and why diabetics have greater blood glucose than others.

Bio for Tianyang Ma: Tianyang (Cynthia) Ma is a first-year undergraduate student from Vantage Science One at the University of British Columbia. She is mainly interested in the subjects of mathematics and statistics. In her spare time, she engages in hobbies like drawing and playing the Chinese Zither, which she uses to enrich her life.

The introduction:

Corn syrup is industrially manufactured through the isomerization of corn starch’s glucose into fructose. It is widely used in North American food production for its affordability and similarity to sucrose in taste. However, the widely use of corn syrup has raised the concerns on health due to the potential risks associated with excessive added sugar consumption, including the obesity and the type 2 diabetes. This study aims to investigate the influence of various corn syrup concentration on the blood sugar in human body, focusing particularly on the relationship between sugar concentration and refractive index in artificial human blood, which might be a relatively less investigated direction. An experiment was conducted in 2024 with 10 different concentration of corn syrup and 3 refractive indexes of fake blood measured by a refractometer. This measurement is utilized to quantify the sugar content of both corn syrup and simulated blood. The findings indicate that corn syrup does not significantly elevate blood sugar levels compared to sucrose and glucose. It may have the similar effect as other sugars on human blood sugar levels. These insights emphasize the importance of monitoring sugar intake, particularly for the individuals with diabetes. Overall, this experiment can contribute to the exploration of factors influencing diabetes patients’ blood sugar levels and provide direction for future research.