Talk:Carbohydrate

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Carbohydrate article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the subject of the article.

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Text and/or other creative content from this version of Glucose was copied or moved into Carbohydrate with this edit on 30 April 2022. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

To-do list for Carbohydrate: edit · history · watch · refresh · Updated 2010-10-15 Disaccharides, especially glycosidic bonds. Oligosaccharides and polysaccharides - Discussion of the important storage and structural polysaccharides (more on starch/glycogen and cellulose) More on carbohydrate metabolism, especially their formation in photosynthesis. Add material on membrane carbohydrates and their role in cell signalling; also other forms e.g. proteoglycan. Improve references - more inline citations are required Could there be a main article for carbohydrates and nutrition? Seek formal assessment when complete and work on daughter articles, many of which are in poor condition. Priority 1 (top)

The image of very REFINED grain foods (white bread, pasta, flour, sugar are pictured) is captioned: "Unrefined grain products are rich sources of complex carbohydrates". This should be changed to a more appropriate image I think..

Should we add this to the article? In addition to the common name, carbohydrates also have a system of unique name rules. http://publications.iupac.org/pac/1996/pdf/6810x1919.pdf

The relationship between carbohydrates and dietary fibre needs proper explanation in the Dietary fibre article, and perhaps here. The word 'carbohydrate' does not currently occur in either the introduction or the Definition section of the Dietary fibre article. The UK's 'bible' of nutritonal data (MacCance and Widdowson, The Composition of Foods, 7th edn, 2015) lists fibre separately, but notes (p. 7) that some food tables may include dietary fibre in carbohydrates. Later it says, 'Where oligosaccharides are present in foods, they are not always measured separately and may be included in the starch, sugar or fibre fractions, … '

This suggests that different authorities may have different practices in this area, making it difficult for people to apply the data effectively. If there are variant practices, the article should say something about them, and Wikipedia should have a standard policy and stick to it wherever lists of constituents are given, e.g. using a heading such as 'Carbohydrates excluding dietary fibre'.

I have posted the same comment to the Dietary fibre article's talk page. EEye (talk) 15:09, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am considering splitting this article such that almost all information on pure saccharides is removed. We have several articles on those materials. Carbohydrates would be everything else (modified saccharides) plus the nutrional aspects. Advice welcome. The main driver here is minimizing duplication of saccharide info. Polysaccharides, a subset of carbohydrates, are polymers of monosaccharides (including modified ones like amino sugars as found in chitin) linked by glycosidic bond. Everything else containing sugars (like DNA, glycosylated peptides, a lot of other stuff) is a carbohydrate. So, the plan is to remove almost all saccharide content from carbohydrate.--Smokefoot (talk) 00:17, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. Reading the article gives a yin and yang impression of two separable categories for the reasons you express. Zefr (talk) 02:21, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support, though I would suggest the page be split into carbohydrate and saccharide, not the currently suggested polysaccharide, to keep in discussion of mono/di/oligosaccharides cleanly. The redirect page will need to be plumbed to link the appropriate article everywhere anyway. Fishsicles (talk) 12:52, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the split into saccharide.--Smokefoot (talk) 14:59, 1 October 2025 (UTC) but now I have second thoughts.[reply]

BTW, there are a lot of articles on sugar-related topics, as there should be.

• glycan (27,000) is synonymous with polysaccharide (IUPAC says so). So we should just merge it to polysaccharide. Also, " glycobiology is the study of the structure, biosynthesis, biology, and evolution of saccharides (also called carbohydrates, sugar chains, or glycans)" from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK579927/#top Essentials of Glycobiology [Internet]. 4th edition. Done
• Saccharide currently redirects to carbohydrate, could be the home for the split but I dont want to start yet another article. Maybe a disambiguation article. Done
• Glycobiology (12,000) this article to be folded into carbohydrate It is an alternative description of carbohydrates. To quote from the scope of the journal Glycobiology "biological functions of glycans, including glycoproteins, glycolipids, proteoglycans and free oligosaccharides, and on proteins that specifically interact with glycans (including lectins, glycosyltransferases, and glycosidases)"  Done
• Carbohydrate (56,000) to be modified:
  • these sections would be compressed or removed:
    • mono-, di-, oligo/polysacch’s  Done
    • carbohydrate chemistry, an uncited list of named reactions
    • chemical synthesis, an uncited list of reagents  Done
  • the History sections would be grown  Done
• Sucrose (62,000). Remove a large (13,000) section on sugar industry and types of sugar.  Done
• Sugar industry (21000) some inevitable overlap with sugar Absorbed content from sucrose  Done
• Sugar (100,000) culture, cultivation, nutrition. Move history (30,000) to History of sugar and then see how it goes.  Done
• History of sugar (58,000) to absorb 30,000 bytes from sugar  Done (a lot of work)
• Glycoconjugate will absorb content from glycan.  Done

• Monosaccharide (16,000) overview of ring-chain business, seems incomplete
• Disaccharide (10,000) enumerates disacc’s, e.g. sucrose
• Oligosaccharide (19,000) sections on glycosylation, glycoproteins, dietary stuff. I was skeptical that this topic is distinct and notable, but at least one member has a hefty article: fructooligosaccharide. Otherwise maybe this theme is a venue for some post-translational modifications by sugar attachment.
• List of sugars (10,000) just a list of stuff like Agave syrup
• homopolymers: Xylan, fructan, mannan, glucan plus Beta-glucan (13,000, not good) and Alpha-glucan (6,000), etc

• White sugar (4500) merged into sucrose, they're the same thing
• Template:Carbohydrates might be relabeled Template:Saccharides

P.S. one can appreciate the predicament of Wikipedia: sugar chem/bio/etc is a massive area (many books), yet there are few editors with the time and interest to invest or comment. --Smokefoot (talk) 13:23, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On a lot of contemplation I agree with the mentioned merge of white sugar and sucrose, and have put its own discussion at Talk:white sugar#Merge into sucrose. Fishsicles (talk) 17:56, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]