preview

Determination Of Blood Glucose Levels And Qualitative Carbohydrate Tests

Better Essays

Practical Report (Determination of blood glucose levels and qualitative carbohydrate tests)

Introduction:

The term ‘’Carbohydrates’’ is defined as the carbon compounds which contains hydroxyl groups in large quantities (King, 2013). Carbohydrates are those organic compounds which have the empirical formula CnH2nOn, or (CH2O)n (Fromm 1997). Carbohydrates are one of the four types of organic compounds in living cells that are produces during photosynthesis and are the important source of energy in both plants and animals (Ahmed 2014). They are built from monosaccharides. These monosacchradies are the small molecules that consists of three to nine carbon atoms and differ in size and in the stereochemical configuration at one or more carbon centers. The simplest carbohydrates also contain either an aldehyde or ketone compounds (freeman 2002). Carbohydrates are classified as simple and complex carbohydrates. The classification of carbohtdydrates is based on the chemical structure of the food and how fast it absorbs. Simple carbohydrates contains single or double sugars in their chemical structure whereas complex carbohydrates consists of three or more sugars (ahmed 2014). There are four major types of carbohydrates depending on their chemical composition.
1) Monosacchrides: Mono means single and saccharides refer to sugar. These are the simple form of carbohydrates that consists carbon, hydrogen and oxygen in the ratio of 1:2:1 (Ahmed 2014). Examples: Glucose, fructose and

Get Access