About sugar from the point of view of a chemist. Chemistry in the kitchen 2

The old form of sugar packing is “sugar head”. I
spread it as I promised. The first post was about salt .
About sugar. What are the sugars. Is it about maple sugar and sugar? Maple juice icicles are a valuable gift from nature. Mono- and polysaccharides. What do lobster, tarantula, Christmas tree, mushroom, honey and Kassam missiles have in common. We put the chemical experience in the conversion of starch ... How to flash erudition. Fructose - the benefits and harms, two sides of the issue. Who is to blame for the fact that milk hurts the stomach. How is it that sour jam is less sugared. What honey is made of. What sugar is made of. About cane sugar - eat for its taste.
Hello! Something after the stories about “white death”, I wanted to talk about “sweet”. This is such a pun, a joke of humor. The question of harm, and in this case, as you may already guess, consists mainly in immoderate consumption. Well, that means that there are a lot of different kinds of sugar on the shelf, both local and newcomers, and they begin to figure out which one is better ... Stop! We will not allow massacre, and we will figure it out for ourselves.



Maple Juice Syrup

So let's start the debriefing with him, because, its not enough and this thing is interesting. This is a traditional product that was received in the USA and Canada, at a time when there was no beet sugar, and cane sugar was expensive. Get it by evaporation of spring maple juice. By the way, you probably know that just like birch, in spring, you can get juice from maple, and not necessarily in America. During my stay in Troitsk near Moscow, such a spring happened that the frost still held on, and the juice had already moved in the trees. As a result, icicles began to grow from all cracks and breaks on the branches.


Really delicious icicles

After calculating the nature of the formation of these strangely hanging icicles, I tasted them ... in general, the first juice from any tree is sweet, gives away wood, some species of trees gave a very tasty, some with an unpleasant aftertaste, but sweet. So there is nothing surprising in maple sugar, but there are quite a lot of minerals, and its sweetness is determined ... Oh!

But it turns out that this is not sugar at all, but only its close chemical relative - glucose. It is obtained in a tree by splitting starch accumulated in autumn. So, easily and naturally, we came to the topic of mono-, di-, and polysaccharides.I will try to clarify. Sugar is a whole class of compounds, they are also called carbohydrates. In fact, there is some kind of semantic difference between them, vague, but they are unlikely to be very ashamed of her ignorance. In general, the plant kingdom, it turns out, mainly consists of a variety of carbohydrates or in another way poly-, oligo-, tri-, di- and monosaccharides. However, some of them are sweet ... Surprised?

So: in general, in chemistry, does sugar or carbohydrates mean?Well, they were called that because, at the beginning of the development of chemistry, their analysis showed that they seemed to consist of a mixture of water and carbon molecules. Then they still did not delve into the intricacies of the structure of the molecule - that is, how the atoms are interconnected. And is it important. The analysis, most often, was carried out in the simplest way - by burning and weighing. After burning, the amount of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen contained in the sample of the substance became known. And sugars - of course - there was sugar at hand, and things chemically similar to it were called (mono, di ... poly) - saccharides or carbohydrates. The simplest sugar molecules that could no longer be broken down by boiling in water with acid were called monosaccharides — sugars, one molecule of which was split into two monosaccharide molecules — called disaccharides. Oligosaccharides, these are sugars consisting of a small amount of monosaccharides. In this place, everyone himself comes up with a pleasant joke about oligarchs and oligosaccharides. It begs. Polysaccharides are a variety of natural polymers from monosaccharides.

You will be surprised, but the crab shell, tarantula skin and the main substance of mushrooms consist of a polysaccharide - chitin.Ah, what a temptation to start production - crab sugar. Or "scorpion", but at least "mushroom". Or even vodka. Not! Does not work. Chitin monosaccharide, although not sweet, but very interesting. This glucosamine is a popular remedy for joint pain. Although official medicine and experiments show that placebo works almost as well. Only now, if it really hurts, then a positive effect was noticed. Although, many people swear that they really help. This substance can be made from shrimp skins. But if you make trisaccharide - chitosan from this chitin, you will get a means for losing weight and a promising means for healing wounds. A powerful polysaccharide is cellulose (it consists of glucose, by the way), um ... it makes trees, paper, cotton and smokeless powder. The first artificial plastic was made of nitrocellulose and made balls for billiards and keys for pianos. Before that I had to use ivory.

Pectin is also a natural polysaccharide; it is abundant in apples and citrus fruits (and not only). The monosaccharide of which it consists is not a familiar thing to us and I can’t say anything interesting about it, but I won’t load you unnecessary. The charm of pectin is that it is easy and pleasant to extract from oilcake from squeezed juice. In general, raw materials in bulk. And this is not some kind of synthetics, it’s a completely natural product. Ancient marmalade and marshmallows owed their origin to apples, or rather their pectin. Apparently, simply boiled apple cake was added to the old marshmallows - well, or not very peeled, they even came across apple seeds, so it was grayish and had such an interesting, natural taste. There, in the composition, apples appear or apple pectin. I do not remember.


It looks like apple marmalade from the time of my youth.

And apple marmalade was treated with natural pectin obtained from apples during cooking. Pectin is hardly absorbed by the body, but it is well connected with ions of heavy metals and radionuclides (which is the same thing, it does not feel radiation, it senses heavy metal. Chemistry) - this is used in medicine. A good property for a dietary supplement is to block toxic heavy metals (many of the heavy metals are toxic).


Cross section of glycogen. In the middle is protein. Around - a coat of glucose particles.

And here is the polysaccharide - glycogen - the main reserve carbohydrate in humans and animals. It is deposited in the muscles and liver. Unlike the energy stored in fats, glycogen breaks down quickly, but its reserves are small. This is the energy reserve for relatively short loads.

Well, a common carbohydrate is starch. Of the carbohydrates, so far, it is him that we eat the most. The monosaccharide from which starch is built is glucose. That's why we eat.


This is how chemists draw glycogen and starch molecules.

Attention, experience!I offer chemical experience for homework. Do on an empty stomach. The more hungry you are, the higher the activity of the amylase enzyme in your saliva. Take a piece of bread, black, savory and chew. Long. As you chew, you will see that the bread becomes sweeter and sweeter. Starch in bread, under the action of the enzyme amylase, turns into sweet maltose (glucose). That's the lab!

And also, if the starch is heated (to the appropriate temperature), then it will become “modified” or in the old “dextrin”. It just becomes better to dissolve, even in cold water. Do not confuse with GM! Therefore, cooks often fry flour for making the sauce - it will disperse in warm water, and there will be no lumps when preparing the sauce. You can make bechamel sauce, and consider it homework - take the recipe from the Internet.


The flour turns into an elegant sauce.

In the title he promised to mention the Arab national rocket Kassam, it relates to sugar that its fuel consists of a mixture of sugar and fertilizer - saltpeter. Very budget option. Fans of homemade low-cost rocket science also greatly respect the mixture of molten sugar and nitrate, because of its relative safety, ease of use and availability.

So our sugar has many relatives - like a Chinese with the surname Wang. We went over all this wealth. Just to make it interesting.

And now, attention!A thing that you need to know to be known as a connoisseur of chemistry: - carbohydrates, it's all made up of sugars and starch (usually they say that they eat, but as we saw, it's not quite that - it’s difficult to eat lobster carapace, and even harder to assimilate ) Hydrocarbons are all reeking of gasoline and fuel, even gas. This is eaten in the only case - baby vaseline for constipation. And then, because, as he entered, he left, well, he doesn’t digest it. It’s easy to remember - (carbon-) hydrogen - gas, you can’t eat it, (coal-) water - water, you can drink it, which means it is edible. Now you can show off erudition at any party. And when translating.

So. We found out that there are a lot of sugars of these and mono and others. Do not dramatize. In real life, very few of them care about us. We’ll talk about them. Monosaccharides glucose and fructose are used by us in their pure form and are even easily digested.

Glucose is absorbed instantly. Actually, it is carried by blood throughout our body, for energy, like fuel.

Fructose- in pure form, this monosaccharide began to be produced relatively recently, about 30-50 years ago. Prior to this, it was mined in its purest form, it seems, from the gladiolus tubers. They did not know how to separate fructose from glucose, for example from honey. And therefore she was a medicine. Fructose was considered a good substitute for sugar - it is one and a half times sweeter than it, which means it will bring fewer calories, it does not increase blood sugar, it is not absorbed as fast as glucose, so it will not immediately be stored in fat. It harms teeth less than sugar, because it is less absorbed by microbes. Now that they learned how to make fructose cheaply and a lot of sugar, other factors began to emerge. It turned out that although it is sweeter, people use no less fructose, and drink more sweet. Still - glucose instantly enters the bloodstream and one of the saturation mechanisms starts to work in us - the glucose level rises and there is no longer wanted. The second mechanism is the triggering of the stomach fullness sensor 8)). Still - fructose is absorbed only by the liver, so with an excess of calories, it is stored in fat in the same place. And what conclusion can be drawn? If you eat as much as necessary, and regulate the calorie content of your food and the amount of movement, fructose products will not bring harm. But with real people this is not always the case. So who is to blame for fructose or overeating? "The girl was to blame for the fact that the man molested her - she was too beautiful." in the same place it is stored in fat. And what conclusion can be drawn? If you eat as much as necessary, and regulate the calorie content of your food and the amount of movement, fructose products will not bring harm. But with real people this is not always the case. So who is to blame for fructose or overeating? "The girl was to blame for the fact that the man molested her - she was too beautiful." in the same place it is stored in fat. And what conclusion can be drawn? If you eat as much as necessary, and regulate the calorie content of your food and the amount of movement, fructose products will not bring harm. But with real people this is not always the case. So who is to blame for fructose or overeating? "The girl was to blame for the fact that the man molested her - she was too beautiful."

So, definitely - if you are hungry and drink a little fructose-containing drink, it will be useful. Excess - no. I’ll add a bit of facts so that you can take a more philosophical look at publications on fructose. Our favorite sugar (chemists call it sucrose) is a disaccharide, its molecule is molded from one glucose molecule and one fructose. In the body, it is necessarily broken down into fructose and glucose. And it was from time immemorial. Bee honey - as it was beautifully defined somewhere - “burping of insects from semi-digested secretions of the genital organs of plants”. Hehe. So, in honey, fructose and glucose are cut in half. Fructose in fruits - in general, definitely, is useful - apples, pears, figs - contain quite a lot of fructose. So, I see the cause of the harm - overeating caused by unnaturally tasty foods. And here’s another touch. We forgot about it but it was, and it was good. Invert sugar. And what is it? The sugar solution was boiled with a small amount of sulfuric acid. Yes, while the sucrose molecule fell apart into the original fructose and glucose. The acid was precipitated with chalk. Excess chalk and the resulting gypsum were filtered. As you can see, nothing criminal. Gypsum, chalk are sources of calcium. But what is the point of the reaction? The resulting solution was one and a half times sweeter than the original sugar. Due to the sweetness of fructose and glucose. But what is the point of the reaction? The resulting solution was one and a half times sweeter than the original sugar. Due to the sweetness of fructose and glucose. But what is the point of the reaction? The resulting solution was one and a half times sweeter than the original sugar. Due to the sweetness of fructose and glucose.

The same happens with bees, only they use a special enzyme. Such a solution has another non-obvious plus. It is candied much more slowly than the original sugar syrup. Bees also know this, it is difficult for them to work with sugared honey - there are no spoons and teeth. Why is sugar more difficult? You just don’t be offended (in Mkrtchan’s voice - from Mimino), I’ll tell you one thing that is obvious to the chemist: - When a crystal of any substance grows, only molecules of the type that make up this crystal grow on its surface. In any case, they strive for this. And strong. Therefore, recrystallization, from ancient times, is a favorite way to clean many substances. Dissolved the dirty, grew crystals, the residues were separated, the crystals will be much cleaner. So, when we have two different sugars in solution,

A little about honey. Honey is a product historically popular and consecrated by tradition. Even the ancient Romans ate a drink of honey in half with grape juice. And nothing of them stuck together. It is difficult for us to feel those feelings. Yes, in those days there was nothing as concentrated and sweet as nutritious as honey. The food was rather rough, with a low fat content and a very low amount of sweets, so eating honey caused an unusually quick surge of strength and satiety. Even from a small amount. In the film "The Legend of Narayama", people are extremely poor, feed on almost all indigestible beans. One of the old women was about to die. She became ill. Before her death, she cooked rice - a much more easily digestible product. The old woman ate and - she felt good, she recovered. Thanks to the miraculous power of rice.

The process of collecting and preparing honey by bees is also impressive. Handwork, yes, how small! First, a bee flies around a thousand flowers and collects 70 milligrams of nectar, takes it to the hive, where special workers chew it for a long time for fermentation, then they spread it over the honeycombs and evaporate to the desired condition, flapping wings. Sealed with wax. And only then is honey ready. From a chemical point of view, honey consists mainly of a mixture of fructose, glucose and very few other sugars. The remaining substances make up about 3%. I’m afraid of incurring the anger of my readers, but don’t forget - I’m a chemist: advertisements about the composition of honey are slurred and illogical, as well as about Himalayan salt. There are few enzymes there, mainly amylases - honey with hot tea leads to the destruction of the enzymes that were there (amylase and others, if you survived - it’s not difficult to destroy them, even a little heat). Again, an enzyme is a natural catalyst, an accelerator of some kind of chemical reaction. Well, honey has an enzyme that breaks down starch to maltose and sucrose into glucose and fructose, and what good is it for us? A little better bun is assimilated. Not for that we love. People and children are allergic to honey, sometimes they don’t like honey. No need to worry, there are many other useful products in the world. But! Let's recall the metaphor that a person is the sum of "hard" and "software." Software is our emotions, feelings, beliefs and faith. If you enjoy drinking and drinking tea with honey, drink it to your health, it will be beneficial. How to choose good honey - I won’t say, I don’t know. I don’t buy it at all, my uncle’s wife is a beekeeper. Gives. splitting starch to maltose and sucrose into glucose and fructose, and what good is it for us? A little better bun is assimilated. Not for that we love. People and children are allergic to honey, sometimes they don’t like honey. No need to worry, there are many other useful products in the world. But! Let's recall the metaphor that a person is the sum of "hard" and "software." Software is our emotions, feelings, beliefs and faith. If you enjoy drinking and drinking tea with honey, drink it to your health, it will be beneficial. How to choose good honey - I won’t say, I don’t know. I don’t buy it at all, my uncle’s wife is a beekeeper. Gives. splitting starch to maltose and sucrose into glucose and fructose, and what good is it for us? A little better bun is assimilated. Not for that we love. People and children are allergic to honey, sometimes they don’t like honey. No need to worry, there are many other useful products in the world. But! Let's recall the metaphor that a person is the sum of "hard" and "software." Software is our emotions, feelings, beliefs and faith. If you enjoy drinking and drinking tea with honey, drink it to your health, it will be beneficial. How to choose good honey - I won’t say, I don’t know. I don’t buy it at all, my uncle’s wife is a beekeeper. Gives. there are many other useful products in the world. But! Let's recall the metaphor that a person is the sum of "hard" and "software." Software is our emotions, feelings, beliefs and faith. If you enjoy drinking and drinking tea with honey, drink it to your health, it will be beneficial. How to choose good honey - I won’t say, I don’t know. I don’t buy it at all, my uncle’s wife is a beekeeper. Gives. there are many other useful products in the world. But! Let's recall the metaphor that a person is the sum of "hard" and "software." Software is our emotions, feelings, beliefs and faith. If you enjoy drinking and drinking tea with honey, drink it to your health, it will be beneficial. How to choose good honey - I won’t say, I don’t know. I don’t buy it at all, my uncle’s wife is a beekeeper. Gives.

I will say a little about other saccharides, various di- and trisaccharides. For example, in peas there is a certain trisaccharide, which, for the most part, is not absorbed by us. But the gut microbes begin to eagerly burst it. The result is a grunt in the stomach, and I will not be afraid of this expression: - "emitting winds." In milk, another sugar is lactose, which is not absorbed by all people. That is, young children have an enzyme for its cleavage, and in adults its activity can drop completely. In general, a mutation that allows the absorption of milk sugar appeared in Europe 5,000 years ago, and is associated with the domestication of dairy cattle. So, if your stomach hurts from milk, you are not European. And if you can drink milk in liters - then you are a European mutant. This is such a joke.

Let's get away from these terrible problems to our simple, kind sweet sucrose.So they get it in two ways: - the first to us the most familiar and well-known - from sugar beets (it is white). By the way, have you tried it?


Sugar beets - not very tasty

But sweet. So, sugar is washed from beet chips. The resulting brown solution is cleaned of impurities with lime, carbon dioxide and sulphurous gas - sulphurous gas, this is the stinky gas produced by the combustion of sulfur, they clean basements and greenhouses from any fungi and pests, give a marvelous light color to dried apricots and raisins. There is no particular harm from it; it is safely neutralized and passes into harmless sulfates. So, the solution is evaporated, and to obtain refined sugar, treated with activated carbon. It binds all coloring and smelly substances on its surface and a completely transparent solution is obtained. By the way, beet sugar is traditionally refined with charcoal from hardwood, while refined cane sugar (which becomes completely white) is traditionally refined with bone charcoal. CoalSo beet sugar can be considered quite a lean (vegetarian?). Well, unrefined reed, because in the process of their preparation the animals were not involved. In fact, the issue of fasting sugar is decided purely by directive, I think. Let us return to the purified sugar syrup - it is evaporated, sugar crystals are seeded, the precipitated crystals are separated and dried. So we got refined granulated sugar. It used to be refined sugar. Sugar was mixed with sugar syrup. The thing turned out by hardness - vigorous and economical. While you dissolve or gnaw a piece, you will drink three glasses of tea. Now lumpy, instant sugar is made by treating sugar-sand with steam and pressing. It turns out a much more eatable product.


Sugar cane

With cane sugar, everything is similar and everything is different. This was the first type of sugar that people began to make. Get it from sugarcane juice. It turns out a thick brown syrup. But his taste is pleasant, although the color is very dark. Such syrup happens in the store, but take a closer look before buying - it should be written that it is made specifically from sugar cane. They also sell unrefined cane sugar. And also dark lump cane sugar is sold, it seems to be made from a mixture of refined and cane syrup, which tastes good.


Dark Cane Sugar

An interesting relationship comes with the price - the closer the product is to dried cane juice, the more expensive it is ... Although it is not logical to the extreme. The more we tinker at the cane sugar factory, the cheaper it gets ... The paradox of marketing. And here is an even darker product - farin sugar. Soft sugar paste of dark color. Also from the reed.


Farin sugar

It happens more - Large caramel sugar. Large, beautiful crystals of golden dark color. Alas, the color in this case is obtained due to the addition of caramelized (heating) sugar and is not associated with substances from cane grass, which means it tastes sugar.


Large caramel sugar

We’ll finish on this topic - although there are also non-sugar sweeteners ... maybe one day we’ll talk about that too. And the conclusion we will have is this: all sugar, a thing in some way, artificial, an apple is in every way healthier, and if you want to eat sugar, choose the one that you like. Taste or color - can also carry positive emotions, and this, you must admit, is good.

Thank you for your attention. Now I will think about the next post. I don’t have more ready-made ones, so when I do, I don’t know, this is how the Muses will order it. See previous post