And natural sugars have a host of other valuable culinary and practical uses, including adding bulk to baked goods, helping foods to brown, and facilitating fermentation. But despite their immense popularity, sweeteners, particularly table sugar, have generated their share of sour publicity because of health concerns. These familiar crystals are technically known as sucrose. White sugar comes from sugar cane or sugar beets that have undergone a rigorous refining process. White sugar crystals can be used as is, compressed into cubes, or further pulverized to superfine, then to confectioner's, or powdered, sugar.
Brown sugar results from mixing white sugar crystals with molasses.
Other forms of sucrose are beet sugar, maple sugar, turbinado sugar, and raw sugar. Monosaccharides, or single sugar units, include glucose, fructose and galactose. He says this includes all carbohydrate sweeteners with the same functional and physiological effect that can be used interchangeably in the food supply. There they may be stored as glycogen or used immediately as glucose for energy by the body or brain. Thomas Jukes, Ph.D., professor of biophysics at the University of California at Berkeley, tells of his experiments feeding laboratory rats protein, vitamins, minerals, and sugar as the sole source of carbohydrates.