This article is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Contributed by guest author Tom Gosink, a Research Associate in chemistry at the Institute. 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.
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.