3. Non-food uses of sugars

Some sectors use sugar for obvious reasons, others for unexpected ones :

• Pharmaceutical industry: sucrose is used as a neutral, inexpensive excipient in cough tablets, capsules and syrups, as a coating agent for tablets, and to make homeopathic granules;

• cosmetics industry: recent research has demonstrated the value of simple sugars in activating cellular communication and delaying skin ageing. Older research, based on glycobiology, has highlighted the role of glycans, carbohydrate polymers sometimes linked to proteins (glycoproteins and peptoglucans)....