Any sugar that contains an aldehyde group (a specific arrangement of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms) as its main functional group.
From 'aldehyde' + '-ose' (sugar suffix), created in the 1870s by chemists distinguishing between different classes of sugars based on their chemical structure.
When you eat glucose, you're eating an aldose! About half of all natural sugars are aldoses, and the other half are ketoses (which have a ketone group instead)—nature uses both equally.
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