Common methods for detecting sugar content in fruits
Fruits have become a necessity in our daily lives. Eating fruits regularly is beneficial for health, and the colorful fruits always make us linger and never tire of it. However, the sugar content in fruits is also well-known to us. The question is how much sugar is actually present in fruits, which is a concern and concern for us. Do we have any way to test the sugar content inside them?
Firstly, it is necessary to analyze the composition of the fruit. As the name suggests, most or even 99% of the fruit should be water, so the solid content inside can be ignored. In the calculation process, the fruit should be treated as sugar water. Also, because the sugar in fruits mostly exists in the form of glucose fructose, the sugar content can be equated with soluble solids, as the content of vitamins and minerals is extremely low.
I bought four types of fruits at the local supermarket, namely: apples, oranges, pears, and grapes. Belonging to the common and representative sugary fruits in the north. We used the existing ATAGO desktop sugar meter in our laboratory to detect its sugar content.
Extraction of fruit juice
Extracting with a juicer is the most convenient. I used a small knife to cut a piece of fruit from the fruit, used a garlic press to press the juice, dropped the juice into a small beaker, and then used a Pasteur straw to extract the juice supernatant for testing. The instrument used is the Atago-5000a Abbe refractometer, which needs to be zeroed and calibrated with clean water and the standard solution provided by atago before testing.
Detection process
Drop the supernatant juice onto the detector window of the Atago-5000a Abbe refractometer, then cover the detector. The instrument has automatic temperature control function. When the temperature reaches 20 degrees Celsius, press start to read, and the reading can be approximately considered as the sugar content in the fruit. The test results are shown in the table below:
Sugar content table for four types of fruits
Apple with 8.25% sugar content
Orange 14.06%
Pear 10.39%
Grapes 19.63%
empirical conclusion
From the above table, it can be seen that apples have a lower sugar content, while grapes have the highest sugar content, which is consistent with our understanding of fruits. So diabetes patients should try to eat less juicy fruit. Apples and pears are relatively healthy fruits with low sugar content, making them suitable for consumption by the general public. There are actually many instruments for analysis in daily life, and as long as we are conscientious individuals, the laboratory can be used by us.
