Glucose: Part 1

Sugar and spice makes everything nice…  or does it? Well in fact, it actually does. Sugar, like spices has a deep background and history, it was once a luxury item. Glucose is the main component of sugar, but is represented in small amounts. Glucose has 6 carbon, 6 oxygen, and 12 hydrogen atoms, the same number of atoms seen in nutmeg and cloves, but like those spices… it is the shape of the molecule that is unique. Sugar can be extracted from many plants, the most common is Saccharum officinarum, or Sugarcane. Sugarcane originated in southern India, slowly it spread though Asia, the Middle East, Northern Africa, then finally Spain. Sugar trade, like spices, sprouted out of Venice. It had erupted and was extremely avaliable and in demand… but it was still expensive. Sugar was used as multiple things thanks to its sweet taste, the most popular was being used in medicine. Now this is where it gets dissappointing… sugar was so abbundant, it needed to harvested… by who you ask?… why Black Africans of corse. Africans began being sold all throughout the new world now to harvest sugar. Hey!, remember Columbus from chapter 1? Well, he also helped spread sugar from Europe to the island of Hispaniola. Glucose is the most common of the sugars, and can be drawn as 6 carbons in a straight chain. This structure is still common today but the most accurate of glucose is actually a  cyclic structure 6-membered ring. The scientist who discovered this was Norman Haworth, who was awarded the 1937 Nobel Prize.