"The foodstuff, carbohydrate, is essentially a packet of hydrogen, a hydrogen supplier, a hydrogen donor, and the main event during its combustion is the splitting off of hydrogen"
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Carbohydrates get demoted here from comfort food to chemical currency. Szent-Gyorgyi, a biochemist famous for chasing the mechanics of life at the level of electrons and molecules, strips “carb” of its cultural baggage and treats it as what metabolism ultimately cares about: transferable reducing power. Calling carbohydrate “a packet of hydrogen” is a purposeful provocation. It reframes eating as fueling a controlled fire, where the real prize isn’t sweetness or starch but hydrogen atoms that can be shuttled, stripped, and cashed out for energy.
The phrasing does two things at once. “Supplier” and “donor” borrow the language of generosity, as if the molecule is volunteering something vital. Then he snaps it back to austerity with “combustion” and “splitting off,” reminding you that biology, for all its elegance, runs on reactions as blunt as burning. The subtext is anti-mystical: life isn’t animated by some special essence; it’s coordinated chemistry. Metabolism becomes less a narrative about calories and more a story about electron flow, with hydrogen as the carrier that makes oxidation-reduction bookkeeping possible.
Context matters: this is the era when biochemistry is consolidating its big idea that respiration is not vague “vital force” but stepwise oxidation, with intermediates and carriers doing precise work. In that light, Szent-Gyorgyi’s sentence is a manifesto for biochemical realism: if you want to understand food, stop moralizing it and start following the hydrogen.
The phrasing does two things at once. “Supplier” and “donor” borrow the language of generosity, as if the molecule is volunteering something vital. Then he snaps it back to austerity with “combustion” and “splitting off,” reminding you that biology, for all its elegance, runs on reactions as blunt as burning. The subtext is anti-mystical: life isn’t animated by some special essence; it’s coordinated chemistry. Metabolism becomes less a narrative about calories and more a story about electron flow, with hydrogen as the carrier that makes oxidation-reduction bookkeeping possible.
Context matters: this is the era when biochemistry is consolidating its big idea that respiration is not vague “vital force” but stepwise oxidation, with intermediates and carriers doing precise work. In that light, Szent-Gyorgyi’s sentence is a manifesto for biochemical realism: if you want to understand food, stop moralizing it and start following the hydrogen.
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| Topic | Science |
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