Eli5 if plants peoduce glucose by photosynthesis, why it’s taste not felt in green vegetables?
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The sugar is made in the leaves but transported to and stored in the stem, root, or fruit.
The sugar content of green vegetables is very low, and it’s mixed in with a lot of other stuff like fiber.
The sugar content of some root vegetables, like carrots, is considerably higher.
The sugar content of fruit is much higher yet.
In fruit juice it’s even higher, because it’s been concentrated, and much of the other stuff that buffers the sugar is removed.
Confections, candy, syrups, etc, are made with concentrated and purified sugar so their content is extremely high and very accessible, and soft drinks are pretty much just sugar water.
Plants use glucose to build cellulose and starch, which are long strings or webs of glucose. Cellulose is what makes up the cell wall, which gives plants strength and rigidity, while starch stores energy.
Even though both these molecules are made of glucose neither of them taste sweet to you because your tongue’s glucose-detecting taste buds are looking for free glucose, and the glucose bound up in cellulose and starch are stuck together very tightly. Your saliva contains enzymes that break down starch, but you have to chew on something for a long time before you start to notice the free glucose.
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