Question

The zombie apocalypse is here. You have holed up in a biochemistry lab and have only the chemical shelf for food. On the shelf you see: various monosaccharides, and various sugar alcohols (where the carbonyl of the sugar has been converted to an alcohol). Would sugars or sugar alcohols give you more energy per carbon? Why? (Assume all of these will be transported to your cells equally well.)

Answer 1

Answer in short is : Sugar

May be sugar alcohols (polyols) are sweeter (like xylitol and sorbitol- both are artificial sweeteners especially for diabetic patients) than sugars, but they are usually incompletely absorbed into the blood stream even if all of these will be transported to your cells equally well. Please look at the table in the following wikipedia website for clarity, how much energy is released per gram of the given sugar or sugar alcohol.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_alcohol

It is evident that calorie content ranges from zero to three calories per gram compared to four calories per gram for sucrose or other sugars. Excess consumption of sugar alcohol may have a laxative effect (diarrhea).

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