3lb article: sweet wars episode v-the empire strikes back

In a blow against fertilizer empire giants hell bent on world domination that might have been better titled, Sweet Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope, the 3LBâ??s first posted our Molasses Manual at Overgrow and Cannabis World close to five years ago. Since then itâ??s been reposted and regurgitated at dozens of websites across the world wide web. In our eyes, this was a significant victory for our small rebel alliance of educated organic growers in the battle against corporate domination in the world of Horticulture.

Weâ??ve all known the ag giant empire would attempt to discredit our efforts to teach growers. Just because a fertilizer or additive is advertised as some kind of special â??magic bulletâ?� for growers, it doesnâ??t mean there arenâ??t effective alternatives available at the supermarket or feed store, but please donâ??t remind the executives at Advanced Nutrients we are teaching that as gospel, it upsets two things. Their ulcers and their bottom line.

The have let the 3lbâ??s know in no uncertain terms that they donâ??t like us telling growers that most, if not all, â??carboloadâ?� products marketed to growers are really just an overpriced and overhyped repackaging of molasses. And now, in the AN forum at PlanetGanja, theyâ??ve resorted to obvious attempts to mislead growers as a part of their effort to reap ever greater profits and market share for their â??magic bulletâ?� carboload product.

Hereâ??s the question that was asked of â??Advancedâ?� - the European distributor of ANâ??s product line:

is carboload black trap molases? whats it consist of? i had a bottle way back and found it very sugar beet like. great stuff,but i found regular molasses to work similar.

thanx in advanced.

Despite the spelling and grammar errors, it would seem to be a legitimate question.

Hereâ??s the reply from â??Advancedâ?�:

Carboload contains 5 simple and complex carbohydrates in the ratios that our favourite plants utilize. The ingredients are:

Arabinose
Dextrose
Glucose
Maltose
Xylose

Black strap molasses or black treacle is made from a blend of cane sugars.

Almost any form of sugar would be a good additive but according to the R&D scientists at Advanced, the Carboload ingredients and ratios worked better.


At the time â??Advancedâ?� originally posted that denial, we honestly didnâ??t notice. That post was made at PlanetGanja in Feburary, 2007, more than a year ago without much of anyone noticing. Then, last week, a friend of the flock brought it to the 3LBâ??s attention, and our rooster and hen research team of Foggy and Tweedy began to take a critical look at the purported ingredients of ANâ??s Carboload.

At first glance we noticed one glaring problem, the listing of the ingredients Glucose and Dextrose. The R&D scientists from AN must be trying to pull the wool over somebodyâ??s eyes, listing those as two separate ingredients in order like that, because glucose and dextrose are two different names for the same thing! At least they were smart enough to avoid wording it that way on their current product label, but they certainly arenâ??t above using synonyms in their ingredient list on marijuana message boards.

Hereâ??s a little blurb documenting glucose and dextrose as synonyms, just so you donâ??t have to take the 3LBâ??s word for any of the facts presented here:

Definition of Dextrose
Dextrose: Better known today as glucose, this sugar is the chief source of energy in the body. Glucose is chemically considered a simple sugar. It is the main sugar that the body manufactures. The body makes glucose from all three elements of food, protein, fat and carbohydrates, but in largest part from carbohydrates. Glucose serves as the major source of energy for living cells.


Itâ??s hard to believe that anybody worth their salt who has earned the title â??scientistâ?�, wouldnâ??t actually know that dextrose and glucose are synonymous. To confirm our suspicion, it took us a grand total of a minute and a single google search to find dozens of sources that document this simple truth about dextrose/glucose. With that in mind, we had no other real option than to conclude that this was an deliberate attempt to make ANâ??s Carboload ingredient list look longer and more impressive to the uninformed.

It really doesnâ??t get any better the further we move down the list either. Every sugar on the list provided by â??Advancedâ?� is a plant derived sugar, all but Maltose are simple sugars, and thereâ??s no reason they needed to try and hide that other than to try and mislead the public about the cost and effort that goes into manufacturing this product.

Again, for the record, weâ??ll document those facts for our Cannabis Chronicles readers:

Definition of Arabinose
Arabinose: (Science: biochemistry, chemical) a pentose monosaccharide that occurs in both D and L configurations.

D arabinose is the 2 epimer of D ribose, i.e. Differs from D ribose by having the opposite configuration at carbon 2. D arabinose occurs inter alia in the polysaccharide arabinogalactan, a neutral pectin of the cell wall of plants and in the metabolites cytosine arabinoside and adenine arabinoside.

Thatâ??s the most â??obscureâ?� sugar on the â??Advancedâ?� list, and all that scientific speak might not be easy to decipher, so weâ??ll try to hit the high points here quickly. Arabinose is sugar thatâ??s present in the cell walls of all plants. Arabinose is a pectin.

That name might ring a bell, rather than being something exotic or uncommon, pectin is what grandma (and Welchâ??s) uses to thicken jams and preserves. Since pectins are something all plants seem to manufacture quite well on their own, we began to wonder if itâ??s use in Carboload might be to thicken a watered down product to seem to give it more substance?

Definition of Maltose

Maltose is made from two glucose units: Maltose or malt sugar is the least common disaccharide in nature. It is present in germinating grain, in a small proportion in corn syrup, and forms on the partial hydrolysis of starch. It is a reducing sugar. The two glucose units are joined by an acetal oxygen bridge in the alpha orientation. To recognize glucose look for the down or horizontal projection of the -OH on carbon # 4. See details on the galactose page towards the bottom.


Maltose is the only sugar on the â??Advancedâ?� list thatâ??s not a simple sugar, however itâ??s not anything terribly exotic, or even unique to ANâ??s Carboload product. Malted barley is one of the primary ingredients in the beer brewing process, and Earth Juice uses wheat malt as one of the ingredients in their â??Catalystâ?� product.

As was pointed out in the definition, itâ??s even present in Corn Syrup, which might very well explain it showing up in a plant Carboload product. Corn Syrups are often less expensive to procure than Molasses, adding one important ingredient for fertilizer manufacturers, an increase in their bottom line.

Definition of Xylose

xylose Pentose (five-carbon) sugar found in plant tissues as complex polysaccharide; 40% as sweet as sucrose. Also known as wood sugar.

and/or

Definition of D-Xylose

D-xylose, commonly called wood sugar, is a natural 5-carbon sugar (pentose) obtained from the xylan rich portion of hemicellulose from plants cell walls and fibre.

In some circles, xylose is being touted as a â??healthierâ?� sugar than sucrose (common table sugar) and it is true that humans absorb xylose through a different mechanism than we do glucose or fructose (the two simple sugars that make up sucrose). However, that doesnâ??t mean itâ??s an exotic or costly ingredient in a carboload product, as one of the common dietary sources for xylose includes corn.

Thatâ??s a little more of the story behind the attempts by the Ag empire to strike back at the growing number of individuals who prefer molasses as a sugar source for use as a plant fertilizer. When itâ??s all said and done, it would appear that the claims by Advanced Nutrients for their carboload product, that it isnâ??t solely molasses based, is likely true. By all accounts, including their own labeling, the majority of the sugars involved appear to be potentially directly related to, or derived from, corn syrup.

A little common sense detective work by our rooster and hen research team leads us to believe that AN is very likely using some sort of corn syrup as a base for their carboload product, since the sugars present in carboload also are inherent in corn. We donâ??t believe that corn syrup derived sources of carbohydrates have any advantages over molasses based sweeteners, in fact quite the opposite.

Corn sweeteners do not offer the rich mix of trace minerals offered by molasses. We canâ??t find any documented evidence that corn syrup will serve as a chelating agent like molasses. And, weâ??ve never heard about corn syrup deterring fire ants either. For more details about all those benefits of molasses, please read the other articles in the 3LB Molasses Manual.

Farm smart everybody, live and love well, and remember, if you are learning as you grow, then you are growing too!

Nice article Tex, I like 'the 3 Little Birds' aka 'the Flintstoners'. They write really accessible grow manuals.

Nice post.
Altho AN is seen by some to be a leader in the Canna-nute industry, there is no way in hell I need to spend the kind of money they charge, just to bring a plant to harvest. My FF nute system work great, and I even have some money left at the end of the month.

Never read any posts from them, but somebody out there doesn't like 'em...
YouTube - The Flintstoners/3 Little birds are frauds

Interesting food for thought. And a good example of why I stay HERE, at a site run by simply a media company with no interest in promoting any individual seed breeder/vendor. I'm completely unfamiliar with the politics behind the 3lb saga or the Birdplucker. That stuff virtually never spills over onto this site, thank goodness. Let's all cross our fingers that it remains so!

Okay, obviously ya'll don't know me from Adam, and I haven't proven to anyone here I know anything about what I'm talking about, but I am a bit of a chemistry/biology geek so I'd ask for an open mind.

I just want to play Devil's Advocate here - I'm not saying anyone on either side is right or wrong.


These are some good points, but the science is a little spotty.

First off, there's actually two kinds of Dextrose. (Ask a scientist if you don't believe me.) There's the D-chain and the L-chain and there isn't any way practical way to tell which one's being used by AN unless they want to tell us.

As much as I'd like to know everything that goes into everything, I can also understand why a company might want to guard their recipe.

But to the point, maybe they list Dextrose and Glucose to differentiate between the D-chain and L-chain versions? I don't know. I also don't know anything about the laws concerning labeling. Couldn't there be a stipulation that they're labeled differently depending on the source?

Also, one of my favorite adages is "never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity". The AN rep isn't a scientist, is he? Maybe he asked a scientist over there and they explained it but he didn't understand and repeated it wrong.

It's not necessary for it to be some kind of big evil conspiracy... it could just be a mistake.


I actually chuckled a little at the part about Arabinose. Claiming it was unnecessary because a plant can make it? Plants can make sugars too! Why mix molasses in your water to feed your plant? It can make it's own sugars with just water, CO2, and light! Why feed them Arabinose? The same reason you feed them sugar - it saves them the effort of doing it themselves.

The less energy they expend making stuff to store energy and so forth, the more energy they have for growing big and strong and - much more importantly - massive buds.


Sure, Maltose is an ingredient in a lot of cheap products like corn syrup. That doesn't mean that it's cheap to isolate from those cheap products, nor does it mean that those products are even the source of the Maltose in Carboload. Is it possible? Sure. But just because two things have ingredients in common doesn't mean one comes from the other. I bet my cat's food has ingredients in it that are found in my food. I'm pretty confident my food isn't made from processed cat food, however.



Most importantly though, the quantities are unknown. (This is ultimately what makes one product different than another.) Thousands if not millions of products out there have identical ingredient lists to other products. Unique formulations can create vastly differing levels of quality, though. Think about it: If I have two Kobe beef steaks, hand one to a 5 star chef to prepare perfectly, and then I take the other one, run it through a meat grinder, re-shape it into a "steak shape" and fry it in a skillet, which one is going to taste better?

Or say I hand you two cups of coffee and tell you they each contain water, coffee, sugar, and milk would you argue that the one filled to the brim with sugar and then moistened with water, coffee and milk is the same thing as the one prepared in more typical proportions?


The whole thing with AN's Carboload is that they say they've done a big ole pile of research to figure out exactly the proportions of each ingredient that the plants want. Molasses and corn syrup aren't specifically formulated for plants. Carboload is.

Are all their claims the gospel truth? Hell if I know.

But there's a lot of faulty leaps in logic in saying that because two substances have ingredients in common that they must be the same thing or derived one from another.


Besides, have you actually seen Carboload? My 4 year old niece could tell you it's not repackaged molasses or corn syrup or anything of the sort. A soda can has as much in common with an automobile as Carboload has in common with molasses.


But hey, that's just my 2 cents worth, I'm just playing Devil's Advocate. I could be wrong. But more importantly, so could the 3lb/Flintstones "report". To me it smacks of conspiracy theory.


Anyway, not exactly the way I planned to say "hello", but there it is... "hello!"

See ya'll around, hope I didn't offend anyone. I do love the forum and look forward to working with everyone to grow bigger and better.

I think both you guys did a very credible job of explaining the different aspects of carbo-load products ... like most growers, I've gotten such significant and obvious benefits from using blackstrap molasses, that I too, don't go the high-dollar route ... I just don't see it as necessary enough, to empty my wallet ... its' all good stuff, just depends where ya wanna spend your $$ :jointsmile:

great reading.....thanks tex! what do you guys think about succanant as opposed to molasses?
whiskeytango

i've heard that molasses really gums up a hydro set-up, any DIY suggestions for sweetening a hydro set-up?

bozo,
peace, love, dope

Quote:

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Originally Posted by justanotherbozo

i've heard that molasses really gums up a hydro set-up, any DIY suggestions for sweetening a hydro set-up?

bozo,
peace, love, dope

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I've been using blackstrap molasses in my hydro system ... even in cold water, it dissolves readily, and I have had no build-up issues, etc ... it's been just fine ... I did drop from a tablespoon or two per gallon, to more like a teaspoon per gal. ... I did that only because my last heavily-molasses-dosed plant cured out very sour, both taste and aroma, and I am 'guessing' it may be because I have been using the molasses too heavily ... I think I just overdid it ... I would assume the plant only is going to use a given amount, and I suspect a teaspoon will be enough to work its magic ... (xcrispi recommends 'Sucranate', a health-food store powdered cane sugar extract, swears by it ... I havent tried it yet) :jointsmile:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by the image reaper

I've been using blackstrap molasses in my hydro system ... even in cold water, it dissolves readily, and I have had no build-up issues, etc ... it's been just fine ... I did drop from a tablespoon or two per gallon, to more like a teaspoon per gal. ... I did that only because my last heavily-molasses-dosed plant cured out very sour, both taste and aroma, and I am 'guessing' it may be because I have been using the molasses too heavily ... I think I just overdid it ... I would assume the plant only is going to use a given amount, and I suspect a teaspoon will be enough to work its magic ... (xcrispi recommends 'Sucranate', a health-food store powdered cane sugar extract, swears by it ... I havent tried it yet) :jointsmile:

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LOL, my next question would have been 'how much do i use?', but you already covered that.

thanks again
bozo,
peace, love, dope

thanks image!! thats what i was talking about, spelling was off I am sure...lol
whiskeytango

very informative thanks