Sugar: How Common and Important It Is

Sugar means more to our lives than a sweetener for our food and beverage, or the tooth cavities and more serious diseases brought about by its misuse. We eat it, clothe ourselves with it, build and heat houses, fashion furniture, pay bills, keep important records, fight wars, cure disease and transcribe our genetic code with the many different sugars of nature.

The most abundant type of sugar is glucose. Table sugar is a combination of two simple sugars called glucose and fructose. Fructose is a fruit sugar having a sweeter flavor on a weight-for-weight basis than glucose. If you are on a diet, you can get the same degree of sweetness with about the half the quantity of fructose, but still a lot of calories.

Algin, produced from seaweed and used in pharmaceuticals, beer, and cosmetics, is a non-digestible cousin of glucose. It is used to thicken and smooth the texture of the material to which it is added. Because it attracts water molecules, it retards drying and delays the formation of ice crystals in ice cream.

Sorbose is another type of sugar produced naturally in fruit, where it is oxidized to form ascorbic acid, better known as vitamin C. Diabetics need sugar but cannot tolerate much free glucose. They can use a related compound called sorbitol.

Wood is 55-75% glucose in the form of cellulose. Aside from lumber, wood provides us with fuel, paper, plastics, rayon and numerous side products such as alcohol, construction glues and vanillin. Sugar related materials from wood and other plants constitute the nature of many different kinds of gums and muscilages.

Cotton is yet another familiar form of glucose. Rayon and cellophane are identical derivatives formed by the chemical reaction between cellulose derived from cotton or wood and the acetic acid that is in vinegar. Rayon is physically produced by extruding the dissolved material through tiny holes to produce threads, while cellophane is generated by extruding the same material through a slit to produce sheets.

Derivatives of sugar in combination with nitrogen-containing molecule groups are very important to life processes. For example, cellulose with one kind of nitrogen group makes up the external skeletons of lobsters and crabs. Steptomycin, a naturally occurring antibiotic more active against some organisms than penicillin, is a sugar and nitrogen derivative. The "paper" on which all genetic codes are written is a long molecule made from sugar linked together by phosphate and chemically bonded to nitrogenous molecules.

Modern smokeless explosives are prepared by treating cotton with nitric acid.

Finally, intestinal gas caused by consuming improperly prepared beans is due to a large form of a sugar molecule that survives otherwise rapid degradation by our normal enzymes until it encounteres the bacteria in our lower intestines.