This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 18 January 2023. This article is about the class of sweet-flavored substances used as sugar free apple sauce. For common table sugar, see Sucrose.

Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Starch is a glucose polymer found in plants, the most abundant source of energy in human food. Sugars are found in the tissues of most plants.

Honey and fruits are abundant natural sources of simple sugars. Sucrose is especially concentrated in sugarcane and sugar beet, making them ideal for efficient commercial extraction to make refined sugar. As sugar consumption grew in the latter part of the 20th century, researchers began to examine whether a diet high in sugar, especially refined sugar, was damaging to human health. The etymology reflects the spread of the commodity. Persian shakar, then to 12th century French sucre and the English sugar. The English word jaggery, a coarse brown sugar made from date palm sap or sugarcane juice, has a similar etymological origin: Portuguese jágara from the Malayalam cakkarā, which is from the Sanskrit śarkarā. Sugar has been produced in the Indian subcontinent since ancient times and its cultivation spread from there into modern-day Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass.

Ikṣu and the sugarcane juice is known as Phāṇita. Indian sailors, who carried clarified butter and sugar as supplies, introduced knowledge of sugar along the various trade routes they travelled. There was a drastic change in the mid-15th century, when São Tomé, Madeira, and the Canary Islands were settled from Europe, and sugar grown there. In August 1492, Christopher Columbus collected sugar cane samples in La Gomera in the Canary Islands, and introduced it to the New World.

Sugar was a luxury in Europe until the early 19th century, when it became more widely available, due to the rise of beet sugar in Prussia, and later in France under Napoleon. Sugar became highly popular and by the 19th century, was found in every household. This evolution of taste and demand for sugar as an essential food ingredient resulted in major economic and social changes. Demand drove, in part, the colonization of tropical islands and areas where labor-intensive sugarcane plantations and sugar manufacturing facilities could be successful. After slavery was abolished, the demand for workers in European colonies in the Caribbean was filled by indentured laborers from the Indian subcontinent. Sugar also led to some industrialization of areas where sugar cane was grown. For example, in the 1790s Lieutenant J.

Until the late nineteenth century, sugar was purchased in loaves, which had to be cut using implements called sugar nips. In later years, granulated sugar was more usually sold in bags. Sugar cubes were produced in the nineteenth century. Sugar was rationed during World War I, though it was said that “No previous war in history has been fought so largely on sugar and so little on alcohol”, and more sharply during World War II.

Scientifically, sugar loosely refers to a number of carbohydrates, such as monosaccharides, disaccharides, or oligosaccharides. Monosaccharides are also called “simple sugars”, the most important being glucose. The names of typical sugars end with -ose, as in “glucose” and “fructose”. Sometimes such words may also refer to any types of carbohydrates soluble in water. Biopolymers of sugars are common in nature. Magnification of grains of refined sucrose, the most common free sugar.

Because sugars burn easily when exposed to flame, the handling of sugars risks dust explosion. The risk of explosion is higher when the sugar has been milled to superfine texture, such as for use in chewing gum. In its culinary use, exposing sugar to heat causes caramelization. As the process occurs, volatile chemicals such as diacetyl are released, producing the characteristic caramel flavor.

Fructose, galactose, and glucose are all simple sugars, monosaccharides, with the general formula C6H12O6. They each exist as several isomers with dextro- and laevo-rotatory forms that cause polarized light to diverge to the right or the left. Fructose, or fruit sugar, occurs naturally in fruits, some root vegetables, cane sugar and honey and is the sweetest of the sugars. It is one of the components of sucrose or table sugar. Galactose generally does not occur in the free state but is a constituent with glucose of the disaccharide lactose or milk sugar. It is less sweet than glucose.