Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for August 13, 2016

No, seriously. Who is Brad? As for Javier, he must’ve been really dehydrated compared to a kangaroo rat.

They usually gets their moisture from the seeds they eat.

Pepsi-Cola recipe was changed sometime in the mid 1960s.It was a light refreshing taste, that left a pleasant spicy tingle in the mouth. The recipe was changed to it’s present heavy, sweet, syrupy taste to line up with the other popular colas. Royal Crown and Coca-Cola both that had changed recipes to the sweet syrupy drinks that they are today. I suppose in response to the American addiction to the heavy sweetness of high fructose corn syrup.Dr Pepper also changed it’s recipe to line up with the other soft drinks. The notable exception was a privately owned bottling company in Dublin, Texas. For many years, the Dublin Dr Pepper was famous in Texas for the original Dr Pepper taste. The tiny company withstood lawsuits from the owners of Dr Pepper and continued to bottle the original formula on creaky, ancient machinery for many years.

of course he drank water—-the way it’s stated , he was adrift without food or water….but I’m sure he collected and saved rainwater and yes, somehow managed to get some fish.two months without food and water? it’s possible , I guess, for a kangaroo rat, but not for a human.

Javier embraced his inner kangaroo rat, I guess.

And for a while, Brad Smith was CEO. Brad has been the CEO of Intuit for quite a few years.

A man can live 40 to 60 days without food, but only about 3 days without water.

Just to clarify some things about sugars. The two main sugars humans eat are fructose (which makes fruit taste sweet) and glucose (which makes sweet corn tastes sweet. The white stuff we call table sugar (sucrose) is 50% each.There are three principal variants of corn syrup – the sweetener from corn (100% glucose, aka Caro); HFCS-42, and HFCS-55. [HFCS=High Fructose Corn Syrup]HFCS-42 has 42% fructose and 53% glucose [remember, table sugar (sucrose) is 50% fructose, 50% glucose].HFCS-55 has 55% fructose, 42% glucose.

Currently most HFCS is made as HFCS-55, then sold to manufacturers of products needing sugars, who then add corn syrup (remember, just glucose) until it’s HFCS-42 or whichever percentage they want for their product. Due to the vagaries of labeling, because they used HFCS-55, that’s what the label says, even though they ‘watered’ it down to HFCS-42 before putting it in their product.

Why HFCS is called high fructose corn syrup is beyond me, since corn syrup does not contain fructose – so HFCS-42 would more accurately be called fructose corn syrup (FCS) since it contains less fructose than table sugar. I can see that if FCS exists, then HFCS-55 would be a reasonable name.

Honey typically contains 49% fructose, 53% glucose. [By the way, why don’t these numbers always add up to 100%? Because most of these substances do contain other small amounts of stuff that make it something more than a substitute for sugar.]

There is a chemical difference between glucose and fructose: the glucose has a 6-atom ring at the end of the sugar chain of atoms, fructose has a 5-atom ring.

If anybody tells you not to eat fructose, tell them they don’t get to eat any fruits, nor most vegetables, nor sucrose.

If anybody tells you not to eat glucose, tell them they don’t get to eat any vegetables or some fruits, nor sucrose.

Side note – anything you can touch is a chemical (or group of chemicals). That includes ANYTHING you have ever eaten, accidentally or on purpose. When people tell me they don’t want to eat any chemicals, I want to explain that they have no choice (air is a mixture of chemicals). What they should do instead is discuss what different chemicals might do to them.

And with fructose and glucose (and sucrose and lactose and …), scientists are still debating. So pick the mixture you like: HFCS, honey, table sugar – or none – and realize next year or next decade, it will be scientifically “proven” to be the better one – usually for reason X, but ignore that part:-). Your child or grandchild will believe you were living in the dark ages to believe such nonsense.

[Yes, there are other HFCS-x numbers, like HFCS-80 – a specialty product that typically gets turned into HFCS-55 at a local place, which then sells it to local manufactures, who turn it into HFCS-42 before using it. Some HFCS-80, -90, etc may actually be pure fructose (100%) that comes in a solid form to be turned in to the HFCS-80 or -90. That’s more of a fight between FDA & Transportation issue.]