one of the most magnificent

powerful

marvelous chemicals in all of the universe

and wondering if you would be okay with me if I had some

Mmmm...

It tastes so good

Intro music

This, my friends, is your run-of-the-mill table sugar

It's made out of some sugar beets...

Or...

from a...

sugar cane...

There's no way to tell which

But henceforth we're going to be...

uhh...

calling it by it's proper name

which is sucrose.

There's a bunch of different kinds of sugars

but they're all sweet tasting, edible, carbohydrates

So, carbohydrates...

probably the tastiest word in the English language

and aside from filling up your snack hole

and making your kids get all spazzy

sugar

is one of the most important chemicals on the planet

They're pretty much the primary source of energy for every thing on Earth

Not this stuff exactly, this stuff is more of the

Ahh...

primary source of all

cavities on Earth

At the cellular level, pretty much every living thing on Earth, when it needs an energy fix

whether it's a plant, an animal or a bacteria

the first they turn to

is sugar.

Now where does sugar come from?

Our earliest word is the energy used to create sugar come from, that of course is our friend the sun.

These lovely sweet compounds are found in every single plant though in vastly varying quantities of course

because it is the primary product of photosynthesis

Now when we talk at all about photosynthesis on the biology crash course channel

and when we do that episode - when we post it online you will see the link down in the description

if you want to learn more about photosynthesis

but for now let's just say that the importance of plants turning carbon dioxide and water and sunlight into sugar

cannot be overstated

Basically,

plants use energy from the sun to split the molecules of water

and the hydrogen from that water is combined with the carbon dioxide

to create glucose

So in effect, this whole process captures the energy of the sun

and stores it as chemical energy in sugar

I'm eating the sun

I'm eating the sun

right now

It's under my tongue

Problem

That was a lot of sugar

Now I'm worried I gonna have a stomach ache

In addition to glucose and other common plant sugars, fructose, which has the same chemical formula

it's just...

rearranged a little bit...

And even though they're very similar and contain the same amount of energy

fructose actually tastes significantly sweeter

which is why we like to put high fructose corn syrup into beverages

That's why we get a wide range of tastiness in plants from super sweet potatoes to "not-sweet-at-all" potatoes

which is why what we generally call starch - which is a complex carbohydrate

is actually a bunch of sugar molecules all linked together

All the way to the sugar in sugarcane is our old friend sucrose

which was actually just a molecule of glucose and a molecule of fructose linked together

Point is

that all these sugars are important

The reason why we think they're so delicious

is because we need energy to survive

and sugar is a really great place to get energy from

And if it seems to you like I've been eating a lot of sugar in this video

Keep in mind that I've maybe had about two...

two, three teaspoons so far?

The average American has about twenty-two per day

so I've got a long way to go

Twenty-two teaspoons a day, people

That cannot be healthy

I did a little bit of research

and I discovered last night that just from drinking soda

the average American drinks about fifty pounds of sugar a year

We Americans generally have a heck of a lot more sugar than we need to have

We should probably having more like six to nine teaspoons a day

so you might want to rethink that all Captain Crunch diet you're currently on

I'm not really designed for a world

where sugar is infinitely available

It's certainly pretty hard to come by something really sweet in nature

and even if you find something - like a bunch of apples

it's hard to eat a lot of apples without making yourself pretty sick

Nowadays we've gotten around that by producing this wonderful white powder

as well as the high fructose corn syrup that they put in absolutely everything these days

So if you want my health advice...

try and maybe eat the way that your caveman ancestors did

fruits and vegetables

maybe some complex carbohydrates here and there

And I would suggest overall to not consume sugar

in this manner

Thank you for watching this episode of SciShow

If you wanna learn more about sugar, check the links in the description

You can also ask us questions, which we'll be happy to answer

and suggest other topics for SciSchow in the YouTube comments.

Hook up with us on Facebook and Twitter as well.

Goodbye

End credits music