Chemistry

 Sugar is a naturally occurring compound that is synthesized in plants and even in humans. The word sugar is a general term for a variety of chemically known sugar variants. These variants are usually in the form of sucrose, lactose and fructose (Matthews et al. 1996). Today, our society deals a lot with sugar especially regarding food and our diet. In recent years, there has been a continuing revolution in developing sugar alternatives or sweeteners that will replace sugar as the basic sweetening agent in our food. These substances are currently termed as sugars substitutes. The reason behind this switch from traditional sugar to sweeteners is that there are increasing threats from the consumption of sugars to people with diseases like diabetes, hypertension and other complications.

In chemical terms, sugars relate to sucrose. It is classified as a disaccharide which means that is a carbohydrate that is formed after a condensation reaction of two monosacharrides (Levy 2006). The main characteristic of sucrose sugars is that it is easily dissolved in water. An important characteristic of the sucrose sugars is its sweetness. This level of sweetness is the reason why it is being used as a table sugar in most households and also in industrial factories. On the other hand, chemically speaking, sugar refers to either a mono or disaccharide. These sugars are classified as carbohydrates that mix up with water. There are various differences between these sugars groups. One would be their composition. Monosacharrides are the basic forms of these sugars and they are called simple sugars. However, further classifications like poly and disaccharides refer to structures of sugars that already contain stronger bonds between molecules.

The role of sugars in our body is very broad. Similar to plants, we rely on sugars for growth and development. This is because sugars contain heaps of stored energy that can be used in respiration in order to convert it to other forms of energy. Respiration refers to the biological process that converts reduced organic compounds in our body like sugars or in plants glucose into other forms of energy (Levy 2006). This conversion yields chemical energy in the form of ATP, while a considerable amount is lost in the form of heat. Technically, all types of sugars whether it is sucrose or lactose or maltose of fructose and also other sub-types can be reduced and broken down into simpler substances to be used and absorbed by our body (Matthews et al. 1996).  These sugars are all made up of glucose. They only differ in the molecular bonds that exist between molecules but overall they are similar in structures. These structures are tweaked in order to produce other sugar by products. These structures are defined by the number of rings and carbons that constitute the molecular structure. There are currently four classifications of these structures and they are Tetrose, Pentose, Hexose, and Heptose. These names suggest how many carbon structures are present per molecules Tetrose is to four, Pentose is to five, Hexose is to six and Heptose is to seven.
                           
Tetrose                       Pentose                 Hexose                 Heptose

Taking into account the structures and chemical characteristics of traditional sugars, the basic definition of a sugar substitute will be that of an artificial food substance that copies the intrinsic quality of sugar which is its sweetness. Most of the sugars substitute today is artificial however there are some which are natural. These sugar substitutes achieve their goal of copying the sweetness of the traditional sugar by magnifying its sweetness over a hundred times. This means that traditional sugar can now be replaced by a sugar substitute at a lesser amount because the degree of sweetness will also be the same.

An example of both a famous and controversial sugar substitute is Aspartame. Aspartame, similar to sugar is structured with bonds and linkages. It uses amino acid bases and other variants to achieve its form which results to a degree of sweetness that is 200x that of a sugar. Similar to sugar, aspartame and other sugar substitutes can be mixed and dissolved in water (Bugawan 1995).  This results to a breaking down or reduction of its natural components which includes aspartic acid, phenylalanine and methanol. These components as compared to the traditional sugar components are very different.

Aspartame is derived from the combination of aspartic acid and phenylalanine. Its initial structure is close to carbohydrates however it is defined as an amino acid base. Glucose, the basic unit of a sugar is composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen which are essentially a carbohydrate. Sugar substitutes such as Aspartame are composed of esters of amino acids and additionally substance such as phenylalanine. Taking into account this structure alone it is indeed obvious that sugars rely on carbohydrate molecules while artificial sweeteners rely on amino acids as a structural part of the molecule (Takwanain 1995).

Another main difference between sugar and sugar substitutes would be the level of energy that can be obtained from them. Sugars usually contain high levels of energy while sugar substitutes contain low levels of energy (Bugawan 1995). However, there is a controversy with sugar substitutes as it has been proven that sugar substitutes can lead to an increased body weight. This is explained by simply having a sugar rush in our body which triggers that natural hormone insulin to affect the person. This results to a need to have some sweet or sugary source. Utilizing a sugar substitute means that the requirement of the body and insulin will not be met. This leads to another surge which makes a person consume more and more sugar resources.

Aside from Aspartame there are about a hundred plus more of sugar substitutes. These have similar chemical structures however tweaks can be found. Overall, one of the main differences between the traditional sugar and a sugar substitute would be the base structures. Sugars come from organic carbohydrate molecules while sugar substitutes come from a variety of amino acid structures, semi-carboxylate groups and others.