From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris)
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition
Subject: Re: Potassium Gluconate
Date: 8 May 1998 01:22:40 GMT

In <6it91r$6ia@xochi.tezcat.com> tert@xochi.tezcat.com (Greg Whitman)
writes:
>
>Steven B. Harris <sbharris@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>>In <6ips3s$hje$1@Nntp1.mcs.net> "Andrew Sweet" <atsweet@mcs.com>
>>writes:
>>>
>>>Hi,
>>>
>>>    Is this in any way a starch-based product?
>>>
>>>            Thanks!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>  No.  Gluconate is the acid form of glucose, a sugar.  They might get
>>it from starch, but once it's broken down, it's not starch by
>>definition.
>
>No. Gluconic acid is the acid form.  Gluconate is either an ester or a
>salt.



    You're right, of course.  Potassium gluconate is the potassium salt
of gluconic acid, analogous to the salts of other better known
carboxylic acids, like acetate and lactate.  Or the salts of larger
fatty acids that make up soaps.  Gluconic acid is basically glucose
with the aldehyde -CO-H function oxidized to the acid -CO-OH.  This
compound is very hard to prepare in solid crystaline form, so you see
it commercially as 50% solutions, or else as the salt, in this case
R-COO-   K+ , where R is the rest of the sugar.

   I was paying a little too much attention to the other part of the
question.  Again, the stuff isn't a starch.

                                        Steve Harris, M.D.