I think that most of us have this love-hate relationship with sugar. Even myself. On one hand, I love my ice cream and cookies - but on the other hand, I hate the sugar that I’m eating from it.
Because we know what excessive sugar consumption can do to our bodies:
However, at the same time, it is important to distinguish between types of sugars and carbohydrates. Because while they are similar chemically, they may not necessarily be biochemically similar.
This is my point.
The simplest and most commonly known sugars that we know exist are glucose and fructose. We know that our bodies can digest the food we eat, breaking down complex things into simple ones, and those simple things can then be absorbed through our intestines into our blood.
Such as glucose and fructose. Both have similar chemical formulas (C6H12O6), which we can break down into 6 carbon atoms (C) and 6 water molecules (H2O).
That’s how we can take a spoonful of solid glucose crystals, put it on fire, evaporate the water molecules, and be left with a black mass of sooty carbon.
That’s also how the term carbohydrate comes about. It’s a blend of 2 words - carbon and hydrate, to indicate the fact that there is a mixture of carbon and water in a carbohydrate molecule. We can also refer to these molecules as saccharides.
So we can also say that glucose and fructose are simple carbohydrates.
These are the common things we want to avoid consuming too much of because of the links to type 2 diabetes that an excessive level will present.
Then we have slightly more complex sugars like sucrose (table sugar), which consists of one molecule of