Importance of Carbohydrates

Importance of Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are essential to life in both the plant and animal kingdoms, forming a major portion of the food that living organisms consume. Honey, for instance, has long been valued as an instant source of energy — it has traditionally been used for this purpose by Vaids in the Ayurvedic system of medicine.

Carbohydrates also serve as the body's storage molecules: plants store energy as starch, while animals store it as glycogen. Structurally, carbohydrates are just as important — the cell walls of both bacteria and plants are built from cellulose. This same cellulose, in the form of wood, is what we use to build furniture, and in the form of cotton fibre, it is what we use to clothe ourselves. Beyond these direct uses, carbohydrates supply the raw material for several major industries, including textiles, paper, lacquers and breweries.

Carbohydrates are also central to genetic material: two aldopentoses in particular, D-ribose and 2-deoxy-D-ribose, are present as structural components of nucleic acids (their detailed chemistry follows later, in Section 10.5.1). …