monster's BLOG
Decorate with Playnormous. 
Just like everything else on the Playnormous site, our online store got a face lift. In addition to that we have some cool new items! If I may direct your attention to the bottom of the store page you will see we have several new school items listed.
Cool colorful classroom posters! Fantastically fabulous food journals! Everything you and your students need to start learning about health the fun way. My personal favorite new item is the Large Eat a Rainbow Poster.
All of these great items are available for purchase only in the Playnormous Monster Gear Store!
There’s no place like home.
As Dorothy always says, “There’s no place like home.” I assume that you’ve seen one of our major new features is the ability to create your own custom monster in our Monster Design Studio. What you may not know is that your monster resides on its very own Monster Profile Page!
My monster, seen here to your right, looks very happy on her page. It’s a page built for a queen monster, that’s for sure!
What you can do with your profile.
- Edit your monster
- Display your trophies
- Track your high scores
- Enter your monster into the Monster Gallery
- See the Monster of the Week
- Click right to your favorite health games
- Read about the Fruit and Vegetable of the Day
- Stay connected with our Facebook and Twitter feeds
- Read fun health facts in the Did you Know? section
- View your gallery stats
And if that’s not enough, new features are coming to you very soon. Maybe it will be a new contest. Maybe it will be new awards for your trophy box. We can’t give away the surprise just yet, but readers of Monster’s Blog will be the first ones to find out!
Share with the world. 
You’ve edited and edited and finally you’ve entered your perfect monster into the Monster Gallery. Now what? Well, if you want to win Beast In Show you need votes! How do you get them? Invite your friends to vote for your monster! How will they know which one is yours? You can use our new feature called “Share My Monster.”
Here’s how it works.
- Sign up for a free account and create your monster.
- Edit it until it’s just perfect and enter it into the Monster Gallery.
- Click on the Monsters section of the website (the button with the Chompies on it).
- Select the first item from the drop down menu “Share My Monster.”
- Log into Facebook when prompted.
- Write a short note to your friends about voting for your monster. You’ll see we already have an image of your monster there for you.
- Press the blue “Share” button and you’re done!
Help us release Playnormous monsters into the wild today by sharing your monster with friends on Facebook!
Time crunch. 
We all know that teachers are constantly in a time crunch. If you are a teacher that has found Playnormous and is wondering how it might work into your current schedule, look no further than our Teacher Case Studies page.
Teachers all over the country are integrating Playnormous into their daily classroom activities to teach about health!
In this section you’ll find how four classrooms are using Playnormous in innovative ways. Each case study comes complete with custom lesson plans, classroom activities, and even what their students said about their experience with Playnormous. The work is practically done for you!
Share the love.
If you are currently using Playnormous in your classroom and want to be a part of our Teacher Case Studies page, please contact us! We would be happy to include you and your class on the page.
Slow as high fructose corn syrup.
High fructose corn syrup has been on the mind of the American people lately, especially in the blogger community. For example, my favorite health blog NY Times Well, has been reporting on the Corn Refiners Association’s attempt to change the term “high fructose corn syrup” to something else in an effort to change the public’s perception on the ingredient. Well good luck with that one after the CRA’s ridiculous commercial campaign last year.
This controversy inspired me to take a break from our new features segment and give you a little more information about sugar. Sure we’ve busted the myth that sugar causes chronic hyperactivity in children, but what IS sugar? Where does it come from? How are the different types…well…different?
What is sugar?
Sugar is a class of edible carbohydrates that can be found naturally in fruits and vegetables. Sugar is used to sweeten foods and drinks. When referring to sugar in the food industry, more often than not it is in reference to sucrose or white table sugar.
Are all sugars the same?
The answer to this question is a flat NO. There are many different kinds of sugar out there. Here are some of the most popular examples:
- Sucrose – Otherwise known as table sugar or white sugar, sucrose is obtained from extracting natural sugars from beets and canes. These extracts are dried and bleached with sulfur dioxide giving table sugar its characteristic white color.
- Brown Sugar – Brown sugar is similar to sucrose white sugar but with the presence of molasses. It can be made in two ways:
- Some types can be considered less refined compared to white sugar in that it has not been bleached and is in a more “raw” state. A good example is the brand Sugar in the Raw which boils rather than bleaches its sugar.
- For other brands, one could say brown sugar is actually more refined than white. This is because some manufacturers take their brown sugar through the same process as white but add molasses back into the mixture at the end. Read the package to see which one you have in your pantry.
- Fructose – This type of sugar is found naturally in fruits, vegetables, and honey. Fructose is often used as a sugar substitute by diabetics because it is low on the glycemic index in comparison to sucrose. Processed fructose is made from cornstarch in a process that turns glucose into crystalline fructose. Fructose is the sweetest of all the sugars.
- High Fructose Corn Syrup – High fructose corn syrup is the product of heavy processing in which enzymes are used to turn corn starch into glucose and then about half of the glucose into fructose. Chemically it’s made of the same amounts of glucose and fructose as table sugar and has the same amount of calories per serving as table sugar. The big difference is that it does NOT exist in nature like some of the others do.
- Powdered Sugar – Also known as confectioners sugar, powdered sugar is white table sugar that has been crushed into a fine powder. A small percentage of cornstarch is added to the powder to prevent clumping. Powdered sugar is most commonly used in baked goods.
- Glucose – Glucose is a simple sugar and carbohydrate. Our cells use it as a source of energy, and it is one of the main products of photosynthesis. Glucose is present in most sweet foods and is often added to manufactured foods such as candy, jams, and syrups.
- Dextrose – Also known as D-glucose or corn sugar, this refined sugar is a isomer of glucose and is made when cornstarch is hydrolized. Dextrose turns brown when heated and is what gives bread crusts their brown color.
- Maltose – Otherwise known as malt sugar, maltose is a type of sugar formed when two glucoses join together. Maltose is a common ingredient in Asian confectioneries and is about half as sweet as glucose.
Play to learn.
Want to learn more about sugar? Try playing our health game Juice Jumble to learn all about what kind of sugar is in your favorite drinks. You can even save your high score on our cool new leader board to show others how amazing you are!
