Sugar

Sweet carbohydrate obtained directly from the juices of plants or indirectly from the hydrolysis of starch.

When Darius I, king of Persia, conquered parts of India around 510 B.C., one of the wonders he returned home with was described as “a reed that gives honey without the help of bees.” The reed that so astonished Darius was of course the sugar cane, and the sweet crystals extracted from it were called—in Sanskrit, an ancient language of India—sarkara, a word meaning grit or gravel. This Sanskrit word entered Persian as shakar and Arabic as sukkar before being adopted by Medieval Latin as succarum. The Medieval Latin form developed into the French sucre, which was borrowed by English in the fourteenth century as sugar. The original Sanskrit word was also borrowed by Greek as sakcharon, which became, via Latin, the word saccharin, the name of a sugar substitute derived in 1880 from coal tar. Of the many different kinds of sugar, the most common—sucrose, the white, granulated sugar found in every kitchen—took its name in 1866 from the French sucre. This French word also gave rise in the mid fifteenth century to a confection called succade, made by preserving fruit in sugar. Over the centuries, succades were followed by hundreds of other sugar confections, making it less surprising that the average North American now consumes about 65 pounds of sugar each year.

An edible form of carbohydrate used as an energy source in the body.

Any of several sweet carbohydrates.

The simplest form of carbohydrates. The simple monosaccharide sugars consist of 5-carbon (ribose) or 6-carbon (glucose, fructose, galactose) entities, while the disaccharides include such compounds as sucrose or cane sugar (glucose + fructose), lactose or milk sugar (glucose + galactose) and maltose (glucose + glucose).

A simple carbohydrate found in most fruits and vegetables. During digestion carbohydrates are broken down into sugars. Types of sugars include glucose or ‘blood sugar’, fructose found in fruits and lactose, which is milk sugar.

The term sugar is often used in a variety of ways. Sometimes it is used to describe carbohydrates in general, while other times it is used to describe a particular simple carbohydrate, such as glucose when discussing blood sugar. Most often sugar is used to refer to table sugar, which is the disaccharide sucrose.

A carbohydrate that serves as a major source of energy for the body. When consumed in their natural forms, sugars are consumed along with fiber, minerals, and vitamins. Refined sugar (table sugar) provides calories with no other nutrients.

Any carbohydrate that dissolves in water, is usually crystalline, and has a sweet taste. Sugars are classified chemically as monosaccharides or disaccharides. Table sugar is virtually 100% pure sucrose and contains no other nutrient; brown sugar is less highly refined sucrose. Sugar is used as both a sweetening and preserving agent.

A sweet-tasting, low-molecular-weight carbohydrate of the monosaccharide or disaccharide groups. Common sugars include fructose, glucose, lactose, maltose, sucrose, and xylose. Oral or parenteral administration of sugars can prevent hypoglycemia caused by insulin or oral hypoglycemic agents.