The earliest humans consumed sweet foods from fresh fruits, honey, and plants. Later, it developed into making malt sugar from grains, and then developed into making sugar from sugar cane and beets. The history of sugar production has roughly gone through three stages: early sugar production, handicraft sugar production and mechanized sugar production.
Early stage of sugar production China is one of the earliest countries in the world to produce sugar. The sugars produced in the early days mainly included maltose and sucrose, with maltose occupying a more important position.
Making cakes and using grains to make wine and sugar is a great progress for mankind. There is a poem in "The Book of Songs - Daya" of the Western Zhou Dynasty in China: "The original land of Zhou is fertile, and the viola is as sweet as candy", which means that the land of Zhou is very fertile, and even the viola and chicory are as sweet as candy. It shows that maltose existed as far back as the Western Zhou Dynasty. Caramel is considered to be the earliest sugar produced in the world. Malt sugar is a starch sugar, so it can also be said that starch sugar has the longest history.
Extended information
Sugar includes sucrose (brown sugar, white sugar, granulated sugar, brown sugar), glucose, fructose, galactose, lactose, maltose, starch, dextrin and glycogen marshmallow wait. Among these sugars, except for glucose, fructose and galactose, which can be directly absorbed by the human body, the rest of the sugars must be converted into basic monosaccharides in the body before they can be absorbed and utilized.
The main function of sugar is to provide heat energy. Each gram of glucose is oxidized in the human body to produce 4 kcal of energy, and about 70% of the energy needed by the human body is provided by sugar. In addition, sugar is an important substance that forms tissues and protects liver function.
Baidu Encyclopedia-Sugar