Sugar, Sugar

A great many foods exist which principally contain dissolved sugar. Generically known as "syrups", they may also have other more specific names such as "honey", molasses or treacle.

Britain and the Caribbean islands have cuisines where the use of sugar became particularly prominent.

Beet sugar refineries produce refined white sugar directly without an intermediate raw stage. White refined sugar is typically sold as granulated sugar, which has been dried to prevent clumping.

Most simple sugars (monosaccharides) conform to (CH 2 O) n where n is between 3 and 7. A notable exception, deoxyribose, as its name suggests, has a "missing" oxygen atom. All saccharides with more than one ring in their structure result from two or more monosaccharides joined by glycosidic bonds with the resultant loss of a molecule of water (H 2 O) per bond.

Derivatives of trioses (C 3 H 6 O 3 ) are intermediates in glycolysis. Pentoses (5-carbon sugars) include ribose and deoxyribose, which form part of nucleic acids. Ribose also forms a component of several chemicals that have importance in the metabolic process, including NADH and ATP. Hexoses (6-carbon sugars) include glucose, a universal substrate for the production of energy in the form of ATP. Through photosynthesis plants produce glucose, which has the formula C 6 H 12 O 6 , and convert it for storage as an energy reserve in the form of other carbohydrates such as starch, or (as in cane and beet) as sucrose (table sugar).

Source: Wikipedia > Sugar