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What is a Carbohydrate?

Carbohydrates are found in a wide array of foods including but not limited to; bread, beans, milk, popcorn, potatoes, cookies, spaghetti, soft drinks, corn, and cherry pie. They also come in a variety of forms. The most common and abundant forms are sugars, fibers, and starches.  The basic building block of every carbohydrate is a sugar molecule, a simple union of carbon,

hydrogen, and oxygen.  Starches and fibers are essentially chains of sugar molecules.  Some contain hundreds of sugars.  Some chains are straight, others branch wildly.  Carbohydrates were once grouped into two main categories.  Simple carbohydrates included sugars such as fruit sugar (fructose), corn or grape sugar (dextrose or glucose), and table sugar (sucrose). 

Complex carbohydrates included everything made of three or more linked sugars.  Complex carbohydrates were thought to be the healthiest to eat, while sugars weren't so great.  It turns out that the picture is more complicated than that.  The digestive system handles all carbohydrates in much the same way—it breaks them down (or tries to break them down) into single sugar molecules, since only these are small enough to cross into the bloodstream.  It also converts most digestible carbohydrates into glucose (also known as blood sugar), because cells are designed to use this as a universal energy source.