Two compounds that are key to our Olestra Chemcase are glycerol and sucrose. Glycerol A structural representation of glycerol in which many things are implied. First, the three carbons are connected although that fact is not obvious in the representation. Each carbon is bonded to four groups and each oxygen to two groups. While glycerol is technically not a carbohydrate because it lacks either the aldehyde or ketone groups, it shares an important component in that it contains multiple hydroxyl groups.
Hydroxyl groups are important because they form attachment sites for fatty acid chains.
Fatty acids and glycerol combine to form the compounds we know as the common dietary triglyceride fats. This molecular model is yet another representation of microscopic molecular structure. Carbon atoms are represented by green spheres, hydrogen atoms by gray spheres and oxygen atoms by red spheres. This image begins to show additonal complexity over printed structures by showing three-dimensional characteristics of the sucrose molecule. An important aspect of the sucrose molecule is that is has not three but eight hydroxyl groups that can bind fatty acid chains.