WikiProject Chemicals	(Rated B-Class, High-importance)	ChemicalsWikipedia:WikiProject ChemicalsTemplate:Chemicalschemicals articles
Chemistry portal v • d • e This article is within the scope of WikiProject Chemicals, a daughter project of WikiProject Chemistry, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of chemicals. To participate, help improve this article or visit the project page for details on the project.  B  This article has been rated as B-Class on the project's quality scale.  High  This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale. Comments: edit · history · watch · purge This article is in need of urgent upgrading. I am no expert but have a layman's interest in scientific advances in the study of glucose/sucrose/fructose in the human diet. Even I can see that the comments on the adverse health effects of the fructose component of sucrose are way off the mark. Recent studies have identified Fructose as a major culprit in causing insulin resistance, diabeties, obesity, artery/heart disease etc. The Wikipedia article on Fructose contains much of the required information; it just needs to be worked into the Sucrose article by someone who knows what they are doing. 121.45.110.194 (talk) 09:40, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Food and drink	(Rated B-Class, Mid-importance)	Food and drinkWikipedia:WikiProject Food and drinkTemplate:WikiProject Food and drinkFood and drink articles
Food portal v • d • e This article is within the scope of WikiProject Food and drink, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of food and drink related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.  B  This article has been rated as B-Class on the project's quality scale. This article has not yet been checked against the criteria for B-Class status: Referencing and citation: not checked Coverage and accuracy: not checked Structure: not checked Grammar and style: not checked Supporting materials: not checked Accessibility: not checked To fill out this checklist, please add the following code to the template call: | b1 <!--Referencing & citations--> = <yes/no> | b2 <!--Coverage & accuracy --> = <yes/no> | b3 <!--Structure --> = <yes/no> | b4 <!--Grammar & style --> = <yes/no> | b5 <!--Supporting materials --> = <yes/no> | b6 <!--Accessibility --> = <yes/no> assessing the article against each criterion.  Mid  This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale. Comments: edit · history · watch · purge This article is in need of urgent upgrading. I am no expert but have a layman's interest in scientific advances in the study of glucose/sucrose/fructose in the human diet. Even I can see that the comments on the adverse health effects of the fructose component of sucrose are way off the mark. Recent studies have identified Fructose as a major culprit in causing insulin resistance, diabeties, obesity, artery/heart disease etc. The Wikipedia article on Fructose contains much of the required information; it just needs to be worked into the Sucrose article by someone who knows what they are doing. 121.45.110.194 (talk) 09:40, 28 January 2008 (UTC) Food and Drink task list: edit · history · watch · purge Here are some tasks you can do for WikiProject Food and drink: Help bring these Top Importance articles currently B Status or below up to GA status: Food, Bread, Water, Beef, Curry, Drink, Soy sauce, Sushi, Yoghurt, Agaricus bisporus (a mushroom) Bring these Top Importance articles currently at GA status up to FA status: , Italian cuisine, Cuisine of the Thirteen Colonies, Coffee, Milk, Pasta, French cuisine Bring these High Importance articles currently at GA status up to FA status: Participate in project-related deletion discussions. Get rid of Trivia sections in articles you are working on. Add the {{WikiProject Food and drink}} banner to food and drink related articles to help bring them to members attention. It could encourage new members to the project too. For a complete list of banners for WikiProject Food and drink and its child projects, click here. Provide photographs and images for Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of food Review articles currently up for GA status: Burger King legal issues, Chocolate

Contents 1 Boiling Point 2 Cats 3 Erm... 4 Chemical name 5 Chemical Formula 6 health problems 7 structure 8 Sugar and cancer 9 Recent link addition? 10 Cats 11 Changed 'junk food' reference (NPOV) 12 Safety Diamonds 13 Does Sucrose contain fructose? Don't think so... 14 Combustible? 15 Where does it come from? 16 chewcowenthia 17 Missing H? 18 Crystal structure 19 1↔2 20 Correction regarding HFCS 21 Merger proposal

[edit] Boiling Point

It says the boiling point of sucrose is ".dec" what does that mean?

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.240.85.89 (talk • contribs) 04:04, 4 December 2006 (UTC).

It means it decomposes before it theoretically boils. 67.42.75.190 04:37, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Dec comes from decompose AndrewFlorea (talk) 13:41, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Cats

People, and in fact most other mammals except members of the cat family, will gladly accept a food sweetened with sucrose, even if they aren't hungry.

Does anyone know why cats are unique? Do they dislike the taste of sucrose, or do they only refuse sweetened food if they're not hungry? --Bkell 07:58, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

This page says cats lack the enzymes to digest sucrose. ᚣᚷᚷᛞᚱᚫᛋᛁᛚ

faulty gene on a feline ancestor - search on Washington Post site. GraemeLeggett 15:58, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

hi my anme is ashlee and im doing a science project right now and i hope i get a good mark for it but hopefully!! guess what i have a nice teacher her name is mrs findlay.

http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0010003 - it explains it all AndrewFlorea (talk) 13:46, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Erm...

My cat does... but I suppose that doesn't make for a good reference...

a local vet says that they simply don't taste it, or don't taste it very strongly: if they're going after something sweet it's probably because it has fat in it as well (i.e. melted ice cream). i guess if they don't have enzymes to break sugars down they don't need the taste receptors either. — Clarknova 18:53, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

---

Dude, Cats are just too smart, that's why. -Tim

Wrong-My cat ate a sugar solution! Scorpionman 17:43, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chemical name

Do you want to stick the other chemical name on?

[beta]-D-Fructofuranosyl [alpha]-D-glucopyranoside

Source: http://www.chem.qmul.ac.uk/iupac/2carb/app.html

Phil If you feel a change is needed, feel free to make it yourself! Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone — including you — can edit any article by clicking the edit this page tab at the top of the page. You don't even need to log in, although there are several reasons why you might want to. Wikipedia convention is to be bold and not be afraid of making mistakes. If you're not sure how editing works, have a look at How to edit a page, or try out the Sandbox to test your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. --fvw* 01:13, 2004 Dec 22 (UTC)

[edit] Chemical Formula

When I was researching Maltose ,Something struck me as odd about the chemical formula. I came over here and found out what was wrong, the same fomula for this is repeated over there. So which is the right one?

The empirical formulas are the same. Note that the full names differ.GraemeLeggett 20:27, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Hmm... isn't that an alpha-alpha linkage in the picture?

Yeah, I'm confused. I thought alpha-fructose has the alcohol group (OH) upside in the anomeric carbon 83.44.34.89 (talk) 21:54, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] health problems

Sucrose is composed of two simple sugars: fructose and glucose. Now, I can't count how many times I've heard the phrase "sugar is bad for you". What part of sucrose is bad: the fructose, or the glucose? Or both? Scorpionman 18:59, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

You're not thinking.. Glucose is a sugar, fructose is a sugar, sucrose is a sugar. Sugar is bad for you. 219.77.98.28 09:18, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

What a nice topic for me to share with i have diabetes and i am 18 years and i love sugar in its solid state or dissolved phase but that was before i have diabetes 8 years ago i used to take my milk with eight tea spoons of sugar in the morning and the rest of the meals high sugar food cake, dounts, i even take my soup with sugar...am sickooo i know that and the messed up part now i can't taste it anymore and am crazy i made all the internet researches but i couldn't find a replacment for a something has the same taste of sugar altough i study pharmachy but i gave up....so does anyone know a replacment for sugar but without causing my diabetes worse —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.235.109.242 (talk) 01:14, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] structure

Your structure is wrong - it shows D glucose and L-fructose - should be D-glucose and D-fructose. Good picture is available on commons. See the difference:

You are correct. I've fixed the mistake. (In the future, you're welcome to do it yourself.) Edgar181 21:41, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Should the "sucrose.png" be removed, and "saccharose.png" renamed, then? Or at least swop the names? I don't know how to do it. Remember to swop the names in this talk page if you do. 219.77.98.28 09:20, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't this diagram show a (1,5) link between alpha-D-glucose and beta-D-fructose (which is missing an "O" on the 2 carbon? Or, if you've reversed the order of the fructose carbons to read counter clockwise, then isn't the 6 carbon pointing in the wrong direction and you're showing an alpha-fructose? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that this diagram is incorrect in a few ways. Thanks. Christophe, Brooklyn NY. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.149.61.111 (talk) 14:11, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sugar and cancer

I removed the statement, "Studies have also shown that tumors, especially cancers, consume most of the sugar people eat." There is a grain of truth there, in that many cancer cells take up glucose at a faster rate than the cells of surrounding tissues, making it possible to locate metastases by using PET scanning to detect concentrations of radioactively tagged glucose. That's entirely different, though, from saying that cancer consumes most of the sugar people eat, a statement that is self-evidently untrue for the vast majority of people who don't even have cancer. Since the true statement is really about glucose, not sucrose, and is far more relevant to articles about cancer and radiology than to one about sugar, I thought it better to omit the reference than to correct it. Paul Turner 16:51, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Recent link addition?

I am skeptical that "your cleansing source online" [1] is a reliable source to include in this article. I would like to see some references to medical journal articles about sugar "leeching nutrients from the body because it is so nutriet poor". Anyone care to give opinions? --Syrthiss 14:39, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

That is a commercial site selling a colon cleansing program in which one receives supervision and instructions from someone calling himself Jos-hua Medicine Man. I took out the link and the information taken directly from it. Paul Turner 10:48, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

lol I hadn't seen that. Ok, good call on both our parts. :) --Syrthiss 13:23, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cats

Some users were saying above that cats can't taste sucrose. Well, I highly disagree. I made a saturated sugar solution, poured the incredibly thick syrup on the ground, and my cat saw it and started licking it up! Can anyone explain that? Scorpionman 02:35, 21 January 2006 (UTC) ur retarded if you think that just because you put some sugar water on the floor and your cat ate it means that they can taste anything. if you put just normal water on the floor the cat would eat it too.

[edit] Changed 'junk food' reference (NPOV)

I changed the sentence reading "As such it is common in many processed and junk foods" to "As such it is common in many processed and so-called "junk foods"." I feel this is slightly more neutral. Joeylawn 02:59, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Safety Diamonds

I think the safety diamonds have recently been updated for sucrose. The new bottle in the lab I work in is rated health-1, flamability-2, and reactivity-1. I wonder what they're thinking of when they say sucrose is a "slight" health risk? "Warning: may cause obesity if consumed in large amounts"? --AaronM 12:45, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah I was wondering why would something that is consumed by just about everyone on Earth would "cause irritation but only minor residual injury". Someone mind checking this out?BeefRendang 13:31, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Does Sucrose contain fructose? Don't think so...

I am not a chemist, but I thought sucrose contains two glucose molecules, not one glucose and one fructose, as the article claims? Is this an error or am I mistaken? 24.20.118.3 16:55, 9 February 2007 (UTC)Dan

You're mistaken! See for instance http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/546sucrose.html

Ben 17:35, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Specifically, the disaccharide consisting of two dextrose (glucose) molecules is maltose. Groogle 01:21, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Combustible?

Is Sucrose actually combustible? I thought it simple decomposed but I only have three years of high school backing me up so there's a good chance I'm wrong. If it can is there something that must happen like direct flame or no flame and only heat?

• There is an amazingly fun way to test this one out yourself - all you need is a bag of sugar and a flame! Inhuman14 (talk) 01:25, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

• The sugar mill in Savannah, Georgia blew up the other day, killing 12 workers. Sugar dust is a dangerous explosive !! That should settle the issue. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.63.237.3 (talk) 05:25, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I read somewhere years ago that sugar (sucrose) is very similar in chemical structure to alcohol, and thus has similar combustibility. Some words to this effect in the article would be nice. — Loadmaster (talk) 14:37, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

The similarity goes no further than having the same constituents: carbon, hyrogen and oxygen. The structure of simple alcohols (methanol, ethanol, propanol, butanol, etc - click the links to see the structures) is completely different. You may be thinking of a more complex structure with an -OH radical - such a structure may well be called an alcohol as well, however an unqualified reference to alcohol would usually be understood to mean one of the short-chain simple forms, as found in methylated sprits or alcoholic beverages. -- Timberframe (talk) 14:59, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Where does it come from?

The article does not specify what the main sources of sucrose are. Is it the suger of sugar cane? Or are there other important sources of the substance? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.129.156.173 (talk) 23:00, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

The natural origin of sucrose is living-plant photosynthesis, energized by visible light -- whereby (typically) sunlight, water and carbon dioxide (from the air) are reacted.

Does anyone know of any other radiant-energy process other than visible-light photosynthesis which can produce sucrose or some other simple hydrocarbon ? Such a process could provide an energy storage, transport and recovery mechanism far superior to hydrogen, I think !

. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.63.237.3 (talk) 05:35, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] chewcowenthia

What's chewcowenthia? A google search comes up with nothing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.35.236.126 (talk) 00:33, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Missing H?

The picture of sucrose only has 21 Hydrogens. The two pictures on this talk page each have 22 Hydrogens. The missing one is attached to glucose-carbon 5. The carbon immediately below the non-cyclic carbon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.49.55.240 (talk) 01:08, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Crystal structure

I am making ice cream. Why does fructose interfere with the crystaline structure of ice water, but sucrose does not? I would like to know more about how sucrose acts in ice crystals, and chemical applications in food production. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stevo517 (talk • contribs) 06:05, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 1↔2

Why is the arrow 1↔2 two-sided? --kupirijo (talk) 22:52, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Correction regarding HFCS

Although most soft drinks in the USA are now made with high fructose corn syrup, not sucrose, this makes little functional difference, since high fructose corn syrup contains fructose and glucose in a similar ratio to that produced metabolically from sucrose.

This statement is patently wrong. Yes, HFCS contains fructose and glucose in similar ratios, but as sucrose is a disaccharide and its breakdown is limited by the availability of sucrase, the availability of fructose (which requires the liver enzymes fructokinase, triokinase, and to some extent, aldolase B) is therefore regulated.

With HFCS, no such regulation exists and the liver produces these enzymes in vast quantities to break down the flood of free fructose.

So clearly, there is a major functional difference. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.204.3.74 (talk) 17:08, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

This is a valid point, why hasn't a change been made to the main article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.255.5.66 (talk) 15:53, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Merger proposal

Almost all of sugar is about sucrose. Those few parts that are not about sucrose duplicate the content in carbohydrates. So readers are not getting the best presentation, and editors are duplicating their efforts. I understand that sugar has many uses and many cultural impacts.--Smokefoot (talk) 22:15, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

• Generally Agree but - the sugar page should be maintained as an entry point to other pages dealing with properties and uses of sugars (saccharides). Sugar, in general parlance, means nothing more than "table sugar" or sucrose. This is what the vast majority of people mean by sugar when they do a search or look-up. Wikipedia is targeted at everyone so a general description page with entry points makes sense to me. Chemical structures are not warranted on the sugar page. Please comment. Codwiki (talk) 20:38, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose Whilst there may be duplication of content, Sugar is a term used for any small carbohydrate of which sucrose is one such sugar. As Sugar states however there are many different sugars and sucrose deserves a separate article particularly for its function in plants and as being the most generic sugar. I don't have the time but the biochemistry section of sucrose could really have a lot more detail. Smartse (talk) 23:22, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
• Thanks. Excellent points: (i) some duplication of content is no reason for a merger and (ii) sugar is a term for any small carbohydrate. Small sugars are however covered in carbohydrate, an article that is pretty good and covers all sugars with a natural bias toward sucrose. In terms of your interest in "small sugars", these are are covered not only in carbohydrate, but also in disaccharide and trisaccharide. I guess an alternative interpretation would be to strip out of sugar the detailed focus on sucrose.--Smokefoot (talk) 02:22, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Also opposed. Sugar is a general term, just as is carbohydrate or disaccharide, but the article is mostly about a specific sugar. If anything, it would be better to strip the current sugar article to the general definition and move specifics to more relevant locations. So perhaps move the relevant text to table sugar or sucrose and keep sugar generic. This seems analogous to a situation like gas versus gasoline or petrol. So, I think a more logical solution is a better thought out separation between the two rather than a merge.--Glycoform (talk) 05:04, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks also. Here are the IUPAC definitions

• Sugar: "A loose term applied to monosaccharides and lower oligosaccharides."
• Carbohydrate: "Originally, compounds such as aldoses and ketoses having the stoichiometric formula Cn(H2O)n, hence 'hydrates of carbon'. The generic term carbohydrate includes monosaccharides, oligosaccharides and polysaccharides as well as substances derived from monosaccharides by reduction ... by oxidation ... by replacement of one or more hydroxy group(s) .... It also includes derivatives of these compounds."

We can shift most sucrose-specific material from sugar to sucrose, that aspect most editors would agree to, but what remains in sugar will be carbohydrate. My guess is that 99.9% of readers looking up sugar will want to read about table sugar (a redirect to sucrose) and will be uninterested-in/frustrated-by our nuanced definitions. But maybe we deal with that issue later after realigning sugar and sucrose content.--Smokefoot (talk) 12:55, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose I agree with Smartse

case closed. Thanks for the input, even if I didnt get my way. I moved the sucrose-specific material (the majority of the content) from sugar to sucrose. Remaining at sugar is a modest but respectable article about several sugars. I still think that sugar should be merged with carbohydrate since they are colloguial and technical terms for the same thing. But we can debate that point at another time. --Smokefoot (talk) 00:18, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.205.160.222 (talk) 22:43, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose Let's make a white powders page and merge all of them. Galactose doesn't redirect to sugar and neither should sucrose. Sugar is the stuff that's used in cooking, a pop-culture phenomenon, an industry. Sucrose is used in labs and to explain chemical processes and is one of I'm sure thousands of molecular forms of sugar. Two completely different things similar in a few ways...two completely different pages. It's like the travesty on the salt page. It's about table salt!! Unbelievable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tnotejack (talk • contribs) 01:16, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
• Strongly Oppose Sugar and Sucrose are not the same thing. This is a article about a CHEMICAL COMPOUND. Sugar should be an article mainly as a cooking ingredient. Tangerine! (talk) 04:00, 3 December 2009 (UTC)