Nutritionally starch and sugar are interchangeable, the advantage as far as digestion is concerned being with the starch rather than the sugar.

And yet we put sugar on starch! So much for instinct being a guide to scientific food combinations! The problem of doing without sugar is primarily a problem of flavor--a problem of finding something else which is sweet.

Hence we turn our cornstarch into glucose (make corn syrup, for example) outside the body instead of inside it, so that we can taste the sweetness as it goes down.
The main trouble with this kind of sugar is that it is not sweet enough to satisfy us and we are apt to use too much, thus endangering our digestions by sheer concentration of what would be, in smaller quantities, most wholesome.

Once more we see that nutrition is largely a question of _how much_; how much glucose or other sugar our stomachs can stand we find out by experience; few stomachs can stand when empty the quantity represented by a lollipop, and yet we frequently see children allowed to suck these between meals.

The same amount of sugar diluted with water, as in a glass of lemonade, would do less harm; it might be combined with flour in a cooky with more impunity; better yet, it might be made a part of a whole meal, taking it in several dishes (sauce, dessert, etc.), or, if we must have it as candy, at the end of the meal.