Drinking my
morning tea today, I wondered what kind of sweetener I use; it turned out to be
sucrose. So what exactly is sucrose?
Sucrose is the organic compound commonly known as table sugar and
sometimes called saccharide. It’s an odorless,
crystalline powder with a sweet taste. It can though take many forms; it can be
caramelized, in fine powder, crystalized... The molecule is a disaccharide composed of glucose and fructose with the molecular formula C12H22O11.
It’s probably the most abundant pure organic chemical in the world and
the one most widely known by non-chemists.
It’s used to sweeten foods and give the consumer
an energy boost, as it contains about 20 calories per tablespoon and its energy
gets released directly into the bloodstream.
It’s extracted from the crop sugarcane or
the sugar
beets , in which sugar can account for 12% to 20% of
the plant's dry weight. Sucrose is obtained by extraction of these crops with
hot water; concentration of the extract gives syrups, from which solid sucrose
can be crystallized. In 2011, worldwide production of table sugar amounted to
168 million tons. And each person consumes up to 100kg of sugar a year, which
is a gigantic amount compared to the 5 kg most consumed a hundred years ago.
Nowadays, sugar is basically used in the food industry, although it is
increasingly replaced with other less caloric sweeteners.
