Sucrose is table sugar, the carbohydrate that every fruit and vegetable makes naturally. Sucrose and oxygen are the two major products all green plants make in the process of photosynthesis -- transforming the sun's light and energy into food. The most concentrated sucrose sources are sugar cane and sugar beets. Sucrose dissolved in water in high concentrations makes sucrose syrup. Other sucrose sources, like maple tree sap, boil down to thick, sweet and flavorful syrups.
Sucrose
Sucrose, or table sugar, is chemically known as a disaccharide, or double sugar. Sucrose is made by joining two single sugars together -- a molecule of fructose and a molecule of glucose. Honey is a 1:1 mixture of fructose and glucose -- digested sucrose. When you eat sugar it is not absorbed into your blood stream until your digestive system breaks the sucrose into its two parts which are then quickly taken into your body, according to organic chemists teaching at Elmhurst and Clackamas Colleges.
Metabolism
Sugar provides your body's main fuel. Metabolism is like a controlled fire. Sugar and oxygen burn to produce carbon dioxide -- the ashes of burnt fuel -- and energy -- heat from the fire. Syrup is highly concentrated fuel for your metabolism. Syrups, like maple, berry and chocolate, can fool you into thinking you are eating a regular food because of their intense flavors. But whenever you use a syrup you may actually be eating nearly pure sucrose or its component sugars, says Mayo Clinic nutritionist, Jennifer K. Nelson.
High Fructose Corn Syrup
The most common sugar in the American diet is high fructose corn syrup, or HFCS. This product is indistinguishable in your body from sucrose, according to a 2007 study published in the journal "Nutrition," by researchers at the Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences, University of Rhode Island. Most commercially used HFCS contains 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose, the two building blocks of sucrose, according to a 2007 report published in the "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition."
Hidden Sucrose
The U.S. Department of Agriculture published a list in 2009 of 18 other names for sugar approved for use in prepared foods. Some of the common syrup ingredients include corn sweetener, corn syrup, malt syrup, fruit juice concentrate, honey, glucose, fructose and dextrose. These are all either concentrated sucrose or various mixtures of its two component sugars, water solutions of table sugar or its equivalent. Labelwatch.com cites a 2009 report by the Center for Science in the Public Interest that consumption of sucrose and its hidden sources is 156 pounds every year by every U.S. citizen.
Calories
Sucrose contains about 16 calories per tsp. or about 774 calories per cup. One pound of sucrose provides almost 1,900 calories, or, based on 156 pounds consumed, almost 300,000 sucrose calories every year, much of it in syrups and hidden sources, based on calorie factors provided by FatSecret.com.
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