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The Importance Of A Carbohydrate And Its Effect On Human Body

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Introduction A carbohydrate is consumed and used in our bodies by breaking it down, and making glucose. Glucose is a sugar that our body uses to give us energy. Carbohydrates generally provide us with fiber, vitamins and minerals. There are two kinds of carbohydrates: simple and complex. We get our simple carbohydrates from foods such as milk, lactose products, fruit, and sugar. Complex carbohydrates, on the other hand, come from starches like cereal, bread, beans, potatoes, and starchy vegetables. The benedict test is used to indicate the reducing property of sugars. All simple sugars (glucose) are reducing sugars. They will react with a blue liquid called Benedict 's solution to give a brick red color (positive). We can use this reaction to find out if a food or other substance contains a reducing sugar. The standard used for reducing sugar was glucose, and the control group was water. Polysaccharides are relatively complex carbohydrates. They are polymers made up of many monosaccharides joined together by glycoside bonds. They are therefore very large, often branched, macromolecules. They tend to be amorphous, insoluble in water, and have no sweet taste. Starches are glucose polymers in which glucopyranose units are bonded by alpha-linkages. It is made up of a mixture of Amylose and Amylopectin. Amylose consists of a linear chain of several hundred glucose molecules and Amylopectin is a branched molecule made of several thousand glucose units. Glycogen is a

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