Question

What are carbohydrates? Classify them and also write their characteristics.

Answer 1

Hint: In our everyday day to day life, we see different fruits and sugars. All of them contain macronutrients in them, including starches, fibres,etc. These starches and fibers are the products when sugar links with each other. All of them are naturally occurring substances.

Complete answer:
Carbohydrates are the sugars, starches and fibers found in fruits, grains, vegetables and milk products. Though often maligned in trendy diets, carbohydrates — one in every of the essential food groups — are important to a healthy diet.
Carbohydrates are macronutrients, meaning they're one in every of the three main ways the body obtains energy, or calories.
Carbohydrates provide fuel or act as energy booster for the central nervous system and energy for working muscles too. They also prevent protein from being employed as an energy source and enable metabolic processes.
Carbohydrates are classified as monosaccharides, oligosaccharides and polysaccharides on the basis of their behaviour on hydrolysis
Monosaccharides- these cannot be hydrolysed further to give a simpler unit of polyhydroxy aldehyde or ketone.
For example glucose, fructose.
Oligosaccharides- these yield two to ten monosaccharide units on hydrolysis. They are further classified as di, tri, tetrasaccharide etc depending upon the number of monosaccharides they provide on hydrolysis. When disaccharides are hydrolysed with dilute acids or enzymes then it gives two molecules of monosaccharides, and these molecules may be either same or different monosaccharides.
Polysaccharides- they yield a large number of monosaccharide units on hydrolysis for example starch , cellulose, glycogen.
polysaccharides are formed when a large number of monosaccharide molecules join together with elimination of water molecules.

Note:
The two monosaccharide units are joined together by an oxide linkage found by the loss of a water molecule. Such a linkage between two monosaccharide units to oxygen atoms is called glycosidic linkage.