Sugar

Sugar is a class of sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates used in food. Simple sugars, known as monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, or disaccharides, are made from two monosaccharides bonded together. Common examples are sucrose, found in table sugar, lactose from milk, and maltose from grains.

White sugar is mostly pure sucrose, which is produced by extracting and refining sugars from plants like sugarcane and sugar beet. These plants are major sources of the world’s sugar supply, with global production reaching about two billion tonnes in 2016. Other sugars, such as lactose, come from milk, while corn syrup is made from corn starch.

People use sugar to sweeten foods and drinks, from cookies and cakes to coffee and tea. On average, each person consumes about 24 kilograms (53 pounds) of sugar each year, though amounts vary widely by region. However, eating too much added sugar can lead to health problems like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. The World Health Organization suggests keeping sugar intake below 10% of daily calories for better health.

Etymology

The word "sugar" has an interesting history that shows how the substance spread around the world. It began in Sanskrit with the word śarkarā, meaning "ground or candied sugar." This idea moved to Persian as shakar and then to Arabic as sukkar. From Arabic, it entered Medieval Latin as succarum, and later became sucre in Old French before reaching its current English form, sugar. Sugar was brought to Europe by Arabs in places like Sicily and Spain.

Another type of sugar called jaggery, which is a coarse brown sugar made from date palm sap or sugarcane juice, also has roots in similar languages. The Portuguese word jágara comes from the Malayalam cakkarā, which itself traces back to the Sanskrit śarkarā.

History

Main article: History of sugar

Sugar was first made from sugar cane in ancient India. People in China wrote about sugar cane as early as the 8th century BCE, saying it began in India. Later, explorers and writers from Greece and Rome also wrote about sugar. By the 1400s, sugar was being grown in places like Madeira and the Canary Islands. When Christopher Columbus reached the New World, he brought sugar there, and soon sugar farms grew up in Cuba and Jamaica. In the 1800s, people in Germany invented a way to get sugar from beets, starting the modern sugar industry.

Over time, sugar became a common part of everyday life. As people wanted more sugar, it changed economies and societies around the world. Today, we use much more sugar than we did in the past.

Chemistry

Sugar is a sweet substance found in many foods. Scientifically, it refers to compounds with a specific formula, and these can be grouped by their size. The smallest are called monosaccharides, or simple sugars, and include glucose, fructose, and galactose. These are the basic building blocks of sugars.

Larger sugars are called disaccharides, or compound sugars, and are made when two simple sugars join together. Common examples are sucrose (found in table sugar), lactose (found in milk), and maltose (found in malt). These are just a few types of sugars that we encounter in our daily lives.