What Elements Make Up Sugar?
When we go to make our coffee every morning, it is rare that we take the time to think about what elements make up sugar as we pour it into our coffee mug. However, many people forget during their day-to-day food consumption that food products, no matter how simple or generic, are chemicals which are made up of elements and compounds. Our bodies break down the elements that make up sugar in order to fuel all of our day-to-day activities. There are several elements which make up sugar.
Knowing what elements are in sugar is important because sugar is a chemical. Some people think that chemicals are all bitter, toxic, and belong in scientific labs, but in fact quite the opposite is true. Sugar is a chemical that we encounter in our everyday lives, much like salt and water. Sugar is made up of the elements carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, much like many other interesting compounds that are common in our everyday lives.
Forms of Sugar
Knowing what elements are in sugar can also vary depending on what type of sugar you are talking about. The most common form of sugar is sucrose, but any time you read a food label you can see other forms of sugar in existence.
For example “high fructose corn syrup” is sugar, and which elements make up high fructose corn syrup are different. Fructose is made of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen like sucrose is. The same goes for glucose. The trick, when it comes to sugars, is to scan a food label for a word that ends in the letters –ose. This is the dead giveaway that the ingredient is some kind of sugar. Many manufacturers like to be precise about what kinds of sugars exist in their projects instead of using sucrose, the common name.
Sugars are not just found in food, but are important parts of many different chemical systems. Sugar is used in many laboratories to start reactions and can fuel much of molecular biology. Agarose gels are sugar gels that look much like Jello – and these are what is commonly used to fuel cellular experiments in petri dishes.
Food as Science – And Sugar’s Role
No matter how you look at it, food is science. When we eat food, we are fueling our bodies with sugars, salts, nutrients, and other forms of energy and elements which are critical to the proper function of our body’s systems.
We aren’t just eating for taste – healthy eating is much more centralized on what critical elements we eat and how our bodies break them down using chemical reactions in our mouths, stomachs, and elsewhere in our digestive systems. These chemical reactions, involving sugars from our foods, continue down to operate on the cellular level within our entire bodies. Thus, something as simple and easy as a sugar molecule becomes a very interesting topic of debate for chefs and scientists alike.
Including Sugar in Your Diet
We do know one thing, in addition to what elements are in sugar. We also know that sugar is – like many parts of the food pyramid – critical to the health of living animals. However, overdoing it on sugar can increase insulin levels to a point that is dangerous to the proper function of many of your body’s systems.
Sugar is the reason that many people are overweight and obese – and although there are emotional reasons for eating too much, it is extremely possible to become addicted to sugar and to destroy your body with too much of this chemical inside of you.
Dietitians are trained to understand the emotional aspects of common food products, like sugars, and how they chemically affect the operation of the body. For more information about sugar, the elements that make up sugar, and the chemical structure of the compound in its many forms, speak to a registered dietitian who can guide you on the issue further to learn more and protect your own health.