Museo de Vida: Sugar Preservation

Fact Document
Questions:
1. What is sugar?
Sugar is sucrose, a sweet substance that is used/found in almost
everything. There are multiple different kinds of sugars like cane sugar,
beet sugar and corn sugar
2. What is the chemical formula for glucose?
C6O6H12
3. What aspects of the glucose molecule contribute to taste?
the spatial arrangements of the atoms in the glucose molecule
4. How was/is sugar used in the medical field?
Sugar was used in medicine to camouflage the often nauseating taste of
other ingredients
it also acted as a binding agent for medicine
it was also used a medicine itself

5. What is a monosaccharide? Disaccharide? Polysaccharide?

monosaccharide - simple sugars, comes from the Latin word saccharum
for sugar, the mono prefix refers to one unit
disaccharide - two unit molecule
polysaccharide - many unit molecule
6. Draw a glucose molecule.

7. What is the difference between glucose, fructose, sucrose and lactose? What are
they found in? What are their chemical formulas? What do their molecules look
like (you can either draw each one, or describe them in words)?
Glucose and fructose are isomers, there have the same chemical formula
but the atoms are arranged differently.
fructose - fruit sugar mainly found in fruit, also found in honey
fructose exists primarily in the cyclic from, but it has a different look then
glucose as fructose creates a five-membered ring
sucrose consists of the equivalent amounts of glucose and fructose, but not
as a mixture of two different molecules, in a sucrose molecule one glucose
and one fructose are put bonded together over the elimination of the H20
molecule.
lactose - milk sugar, a disaccharide created from one unit of glucose and
one unit of monosaccharide, galactose an isomer of glucose the only
difference is that an atom is placed in a different place then one in glucose.

8. What is an isomer?
an isomer is a compound that has the same chemical formula but different
arrangements of these atoms.
9. What does the body use glucose for? What happens to the human body if glucose
levels are off?
the brain of a healthy mammal uses glucose as fuel
brain cells depend on the minute to minute supply from the bloodstream,
as there are no fuel reserves or storage in the brain
if the glucose level in blood falls under or to 50 percent of the normal level
symptoms of brain dysfunction appear.
at 25 percent of the normal level a coma may result

10. What other compounds are sweet but are unfit for human consumption? Why?
ethylene glycol, found in antifreeze used in car radiators, the solubility and
the flexibility of the ethylene glycol and the distance between oxygen are
the cause of its sweet taste
glycerol, in moderate amounts is safe to consume, used a lot in prepared
foods due to its viscosity and high water solubility
11. List the artificial sweeteners discussed in the reading. Tell me a bit about each.
sucralose, very similar to sucrose, atoms are placed different in atomic
structure.
aspartame, synthetic, composed of two naturally occurring amino acids, its
200 times sweeter then glucose
saccharin, no calorific value, became exploited very quickly commercially,
concern about the toxicity, led to the creation of other artificial sweeteners.