1. “Carbohydrates” Do you ever: Think of carbs as providing nothing but calories to the body? Wonder why nutrition authorities recommend foods high in fiber? Blame carbs for obesity or disease? Have trouble distinguishing whole- grain foods from others at the store?

2. What are some foods rich in carbs?

3. Where do we get them?  “Green plants make carbohydrate through photosynthesis.”  In this process, water, sunlight energy, and oxygen are used.  “Light energy is stored in a plant as chemical energy: carbs.”  The purpose is to store energy for later (when it’s dark).

4. Photosynthesis

5.  “Milk: the only animal-made food with lots of carbs, to supply baby with energy”  For this reason, breastfeeding mothers need to eat a lot….they burn up to 500 calories a day just feeding!

6. Let’s Look at the Molecules  “Six sugars are important to us.”  “Three: Monosaccharides, single sugars”  “Three: Disaccharides, double sugars”  They all end in –ose, which means sugar.

7. “The three mono’s join together in combinations to make the three di’s.”

8. A note on the glucose symbol: The glucose molecule is really a ring of 5 Carbons and 1 oxygen plus a carbon “flag.” Carbons Oxygen For convenience, glucose is symbolized as or

9. “Mono’s”  “1. Glucose: most common, used by plants and animals. AKA blood sugar.”

10.  “2. Fructose: in fruit, honey, added to prepared food (high fructose corn syrup).”

11.  “3. Galactose: is a part of milk sugar (lactose)”  This is rarely found in nature on its own.

12. “Di’s”  “All contain glucose”  “1. Lactose: milk sugar”

13.  “2. Maltose: appears where starch is being broken down (ex. stomach)”

14.  “3. Sucrose: table sugar, found in plants”  Where does your table sugar come from?

15.  Table sugar is usually obtained by refining the juice from sugar beets or sugarcane.  Discovery Streaming Discovery Streaming Discovery Streaming

16.  Eating fruit is different from eating candy because the molecules are different.  Fructose is a monosaccharide, which is digested differently than a disaccharide.  Both contain sugar, but the body views them very differently!

17. Which brings us to… “Starch”  What kinds of foods do you think of when you think of starch?

18.  “Plants put glucose into long strands for storage = polysaccharides.”  “Starch and fiber are examples.”  So starch doesn’t taste sweet, but it is made of sugar.

19.  For this reason, fresher corn tastes sweeter!  Longer it sits on the shelf  more sugar is stored as starch.

20.  Starch is useful to a plant when there’s no sunlight to obtain energy.  It’s also helpful to seeds, which can’t photosynthesize.  Plants pack their embryos in starchy seeds for a food supply.

21. How do we store sugar?  “Animals store sugar as glycogen in our muscles.”  So why doesn’t a hamburger taste sweet?  Glycogen breaks down quickly when an animal is slaughtered.

22. “Fiber”  Fiber is a super-important polysaccharide for us.  “Fibers form the supporting structures of leaves, stems, and seeds.”

23. Here’s the Catch…  “We can’t digest fiber!!”  So if we need it, but we can’t digest it, how do we get it??  “Soluble fibers easily dissolve in water, are digested by bacteria in our colon.”  Good bacteria! We need it!

24. Can anyone digest fiber?  Animals with larger digestive systems (like cows) can digest fiber…it has to be digested repeatedly.  When we eat the meat, we obtain the energy, but not the fiber.

25.  Soluble fibers dissolve in water and are digested by bacteria.  These are excellent for us!  “Oats, barley, and citrus: lower cholesterol, protect against heart disease and diabetes”  They also add a nice consistency to foods, like fruit pectin that makes jelly thick and others that thicken salad dressings.

26.  “Insoluble fibers don’t dissolve in water, and help us eliminate waste.”  Patients who are chronically constipated usually don’t have enough fiber or water in their diet.  “Bran, celery, corn, seeds”  We now know: very good at preventing colon cancers!