Glucose

          Sugar is a very well-known substance to every person in the world, being used all over the globe by innumerous different cultures. Sugar is essentially sucrose, substance in which main component is glucose. The extensive use of sugar started centuries ago, in a time where sugar moved nations and the greed for the sugar trade brought prosperity to some populations, and misery to others.

            Sugar obtained by the sugarcanes originated mainly from the South Pacific or southern India reached Europe for the first time during the thirteenth century. The sugar trade was handled in the same way as the spice trade, being the Venice merchants also the ones with the power over the sugar trades in the beginning. Sugar started by being something only used by the rich, as a flavoring substance for meat and fish dishes, or used in medicine to disguise strong tastes of medication ingredients, as binding agents for drugs or as medicine itself. However, by the sixteenth century and eighteenth century sugar demand increased a lot. The uses for sugar increased and this sweating and preservative substance became a necessity. The sugar trade became so profitable that Europeans desired to take it from the domination of the Middle East. With the discovery of the new world and its prefect conditions for the cultivation of sugarcane, Europeans took this change to take over the sugar trade. The cultivation of this valuable substance was a very hard labor job, and Europeans used slaves to produce the sugar. Sugar was of course not the only reason for the start centuries of slavery and discrimination, however sugar was the main reason for the trade of slaves that were taken from their homeland in Africa to the New World just to work in the production of sugar. This trade was mainly dominated by the Portuguese and Spanish and with the increase of the demand of sugar in the years that followed due to new technologies and rum, even more slaves were sent to the New world. Sugar trade gave great prosperity to various countries, giving England and France the capital that would years after be indispensable for the industrial revolution.

        Sugar is nothing more than sucrose, molecule in which main component is glucose. If the chemical formulas of glucose, and the molecules that give the taste to nutmeg and cloves are analyzed, we will be able to see that they have the same number of atoms, however their shape and arrangement of their atoms are completely different and this is the reason for its' tastes to also be so different. This monosaccharide is the reason why sugar gives us the sweet taste sensation. Glucose molecules are six membered ring structures, with five carbons and one oxygen, and depending on an OH group position the glucose may be alpha our beta.

Situation that also happens with its’ isomer fructose, which can also be either an alpha, or beta structure. Sucrose is a disaccharide, made of one alpha glucose and one beta fructose joined through a condensation reaction, and containing equal amounts of the both saccharides. This sucrose will then be the building block of the substance we know as sugar. Glucose molecules are very important for the well-functioning of the human body since they are our fuel, and our cells, especially brain cells need it for the production of energy, without it symptoms of brain dysfunction may even appear. Sugars are so appreciated by general public due to its sweetness which comes from the arrangement of a group of atoms in the molecule. It is believed that this sweet sensation is due to the ability of a sugar molecule to temporarily bind to a protein molecule in a taste receptor on the taste buds which sends a signal to the brain. This binding only happens thanks to the molecular geometry of the 'sweet' molecules, since it makes it possible for an  hydrogen from the molecule to bind to the taste bud receptor site. Since the sweet taste is not from the specific sugar molecules, there are a lot of other molecules which being non sugars, are still sweet, since its' geometry, atoms and flexibility makes the binding to the taste bud possible. Lead acetate, saccharin, sodium cyclamate, aspartame and sucralose   are examples of these sweet non-sugars which were the beginning of the huge industry of artificial sweeteners. This substitute to sugars were most of the times not metabolized in the human body, having also no calorific value and being usually hundreds of times sweeter than standard sugar. All this factors made the use of substitute sugars very popular, however they can also have some problems. Some may have other detectable tastes, or not be very soluble, or also be only used in soft drinks and cold foods due to its decomposition circumstances. Adding to that, there are sweeteners that should be avoided by people with certain conditions in which their metabolic processes don't occur as effectively.

        This attachment and love humans have for sugar as existed for centuries and still exists nowadays, with the enormous use of sugar in most of our foods, and our need for artificial sweeteners shows our necessity over this sweet sensation. The authors do a great job portraying the importance that sugar had to the world's culture and ethnical make up of countries. Our need for sugar as led us to centuries of brutalities over a nation and changed the shape of human society. The fact that sugar was so important and valuable that was even used as a political tool can be quite shocking to some. Nowadays of course people treasure sugar, our necessity and affection towards this molecule that produces such pleasant taste still exists, and its uses are still immense. However  even though sugar is still present in our life in so many things, we cannot say it has the same importance it had centuries ago since people themselves see it for granted and tend to not understand how sugar influences our lifes.