Carbohydrates mean combination of carbon hydrogen and oxygen. It abbreviation is CHO. The word carbohydrates came from two words Carbo and Hydrates. Carbo means carbon and hydrate is a word like hydration. These two words are related to water. So it will be not wrong to say that carbohydrates basically mean the different combination of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. And the various sections of these three join and break by taking or releasing water. Carbohydrates are basically sugar and starches.

The simple sugar that is an important factor of human nutrition are basically sucrose, fructose, lactose and maltose. These all break down in the body and change into glucose. Glucose is the simple sugar which body needs. Sucrose is also called table sugar. Sucrose can be obtained from sugar cane, sugar beet and from the juice of sugar maple tree. Sucrose is also naturally found in some fruits and vegetables. The word sugar that is used commonly usually referred to sucrose. Sucrose has two other names that are dextrose and saccharose.

Fructose is mostly found in honey, fruits and corn. Fructose is also called laevulose. It is better to use fructose then sucrose because it taste sweeter that’s why it is used less as compare to sucrose. Lactose is found in milk and cottage cheese. Maltose is found in grains. All these type of sugar break down and change into glucose with help of water.

Starches are found in potatoes, cereal, wheat, rice and other grains. Starches and sugar are sacchrides. Sacchrides is sweet tasting carbohydrates. There are two types of Sacchrides Mono sacchrides and Poly sacchrides. Mono means one and poly means many. Refereeing to their names mono sacchrides are simple sugar and poly sacchrides are complex sugar. Starches are basically poly sacchrides. Complex sugar like starches first break down and change into simple sugar like maltose and then change into glucose. Starches are the most valuable polysaccharide. Starches are not as sweet as sugar. But the process of changing from complex sugar to simple sugar is not that much complicated. Mostly starches name ends with letter “an”. Some examples are glycan and mannan.