Scripps Howard News Service

Sugars come in an amazing variety of names and forms, but scientists say the labels don't make much difference in the stomach since they are all processed the same way.

"Once in your body, there is absolutely no difference between added and natural sugar. The body can't tell if you have eaten table sugar or sugar from a fruit. It all gets converted to glucose," said Christopher Gardner, director of nutrition studies at the Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention.

Here's some of the aliases sugar uses:

-- dextrose, a liquid sugar solution.

-- fructose, a sugar commonly found in honey and fruit.

-- galactose, a white, crystalline sugar derived from milk.

-- lactose, sugar derived from milk.

-- maltose, a white, crystalline sugar derived from starch.

-- sucrose, common white table sugar.

-- dextrin, a carbohydrate derived from starch.

Depending on where it comes from, sugar can also have names on product labels as barley malt, beet sugar, brown sugar, cane sugar, cane syrup, cane syrup solids, confectioner's sugar, corn sweetener, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, crystalline fructose, date sugar, evaporated sugar cane, fruit juice concentrate, granulated sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, invert sugar, liquid cane sugar, liquid cane syrup, maple syrup, molasses, powdered sugar, raw sugar, sucrolose (sugar and molasses), sugar cane syrup, table sugar, turbinado sugar, unrefined sugar and white sugar.

So-called sugar alcohols, which are used in ice cream, candies and chewing gum in lieu of sugar, include mannitol, sorbitol, xylitol and also maltitol.