A little extra simple sugar in your diet probably won't make you pack on the pounds -- as long as you cut down on other carbs to make up for it, a new analysis of past studies suggests. Researchers found that people who consumed extra fructose baked into breads or sprinkled into drinks didn't gain any extra weight compared to those who had other types of carbohydrates instead -- when they ate the same numbe... (read more)
Fat people have less than thin people. Older people have less than younger people. Men have less than younger women. It is brown fat, actually brown in color, and its great appeal is that it burns calories like a furnace. A new study finds that one form of it, which is turned on when people get cold, sucks fat out of the rest of the body to fuel itself. Another new study finds tha... (read more)
Obese individuals are less able to inhibit the impulsive desire to eat than people of normal weight, especially when their blood-sugar levels go down below normal, researchers from Yale University and the University of Southern California reported in The Journal of Clinical Investigation. They also found that for most people, when the brain becomes hungry, a chocolate bar suddenly lo... (read more)
A carbohydrate is an organic compound with the empirical formula Cm(H2O)n (where m could be different from n); that is, consists only of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, with a hydrogen:oxygen atom ratio of 2:1 (as in water). However, there are exceptions to this. One common example would be deoxyribose, a component of DNA, which has the empirical formula C5H10O4. Carbohydrates can be viewed as hydrates of carbon, hence their name. Structurally however, it is more accurate to view them as polyhydroxy aldehydes and ketones.
The term is most common in biochemistry, where it is a synonym of saccharide. The carbohydrates (saccharides) are divided into four chemical groupings: monosaccharides, disaccharides, oligosaccharides, and polysaccharides. In general, the monosaccharides and disaccharides, which are smaller (lower molecular weight) carbohydrates, are commonly referred to as sugars. The word saccharide comes from the Greek word σάκχαρον (sákkharon), meaning "sugar". While the scientific nomenclature of carbohydrates is complex, the names of the monosaccharides and disaccharides very often end in the suffix -ose. For example, blood sugar is the monosaccharide glucose, table sugar is the disaccharide sucrose, and milk sugar is the disaccharide lactose (see illustration).
Carbohydrates perform numerous roles in living things. Polysaccharides serve for the storage of energy (e.g., starch and glycogen), and as structural components (e.g., cellulose in plants and chitin in arthropods). The 5-carbon monosaccharide ribose is an important component of coenzymes (e.g., ATP, FAD, and NAD) and the backbone of the genetic molecule known as RNA. The related deoxyribose is a component of DNA. Saccharides and their derivatives include many other important biomolecules that play key roles in the immune system, fertilization, preventing pathogenesis, blood clotting, and development.
In food science and in many informal contexts, the term carbohydrate often means any food that is particularly rich in the complex carbohydrate starch (such as cereals, bread, and pasta) or simple carbohydrates, such as sugar (found in candy, jams, and desserts).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate
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