What are sugars? What are carbs?

I see a lot of articles and videos with people using the terms "sugar" and "carbs" in a way that feels haphazard, so wanted to do a brief recap of what these are and how they are related to each other.  If you already know this feel free to skip this article.

First, a definition of sorts.  Carbohydrate = Carbo (carbon) + hydrate (another name for water).

Second, some chemical formulas.  Carbon is an element, symbol C.  Water is a molecule made of 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom, written as H₂0.

So carbohydrates are made of some number of carbon atoms and an equal number of water molecules. For example, the sugar sucrose has the chemical formula C₆H₁₂O₆ and can be thought of as 6 x (C + H₂O)

The family of molecules that make up carbohydrates includes both sugars and starches.

Here are a couple of basic sugars (also called monosaccharides (mono means 1) because they have 1 basic sugar element:

• glucose (used extensively by the body for energy)
• fructose (found in fruit)
• galactose (more on this shortly)

Here are a couple of common disaccharides (di means 2)

• sucrose (table sugar) = 1 glucose + 1 fructose (50% glucose and 50% fructose)
• lactose (found in milk) = 1 glucose + 1 galactose

Starch (found in potatoes, bread, rice, pasta, and cereals) is a large molecule made of many glucose molecules.  The body breaks these down into individual glucose molecules for processing.

And finally, there are some common sweets that are mixtures of sugars:

• High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) (found often in sodas) = 55% fructose and 45% glucose
• Honey = 40% fructose and 60% glucose
• Agave syrup = 80% fructose and 20% glucose

Below are pictures of some of these molecules:

Glucose

Fructose

If you have questions or comments please post them in the comments section.

Where We Are Going From Here…

We will look deeper into the effect that sugars and carbs have on your health as we go along.

I Plan to Publish on Fridays…

Coming articles:

• My Philosophy of Weight Loss
• Outsmarting Your Habit System
• Book Review - The Power of Habit
• Quitting Soda - How I did it