Fructose and Glucose in Foods

Overview
Fructose and glucose are kinds of sugar. You consume them whenever you eat foods containing high fructose corn syrup, table sugar or naturally occurring sugars. TERA Gold You also take in glucose -- though not fructose -- whenever you eat starch. Your cells use fructose and glucose to provide for their energy needs; you can burn the sugars to produce the energy molecule ATP, which fuels muscle movement and other cellular activities.

Sugar Chemistry
Sugars are a subset of the class of nutrient molecules called carbohydrates, which consist of the elements carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Starches, found in grains and vegetables like potatoes, are also carbohydrates. All carbohydrates -- sugar and starch -- are made up of one or more sugar units called monosaccharides, chemically bonded together. Carbohydrates consisting of just one or two monosaccharides are sugars and taste sweet. Starches, on the other hand, consist of long chains of bonded monosaccharides, and don't taste sweet. Glucose and fructose are monosaccharides.

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Sources of Glucose and Fructose
Some foods contain the monosaccharides glucose or fructose on their own. For instance, glucose and fructose occur naturally in fruit. Plants synthesize the monosaccharides from carbon dioxide and water by using the sun's energy -- this process is called photosynthesis, RIFT Platinum explain Doctors Mary Campbell and Shawn Farrell in their book "Biochemistry." Some foods also contain glucose and fructose chemically bonded together in the form of the sugar sucrose, more commonly called table sugar. Fruit is a natural source of sucrose, but it's also added to many foods as a sweetening agent. Finally, you take in glucose whenever you consume starch.

Digestion
Depending upon the form in which you take in glucose and fructose in your food, you may or may not need to digest the nutrient molecules to absorb them into the bloodstream. Sources of pure glucose and fructose don't need to be digested; you can absorb the monosaccharides directly. If glucose is chemically bonded to fructose -- as in table sugar -- or to other glucose molecules as in starch, you use enzymes to separate the monosaccharides from one another before absorbing them. Dr. Lauralee Sherwood, in her book "Human Physiology," rift gold explains that this process is so rapid that it doesn't significantly slow the rate at which you can absorb the glucose from starch relative to the rate at which you can absorb pure glucose.

Uses
After you absorb glucose and fructose from your food, your cells can take up the monosaccharides and use them for a variety of purposes. RIFT Platinum The major difference between glucose and fructose with regard to cellular uptake is that you need insulin, a hormone from the pancreas, to signal cells to take up glucose. Your cells don't require insulin to take up fructose. Cells can chemically burn glucose or fructose for immediate energy. Rift Gold They can also store fructose or glucose in one of two forms -- as glycogen or as fat. Both storage molecules require chemically reacting glucose and fructose and modifying them into appropriate glycogen or fat precursor molecules.