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I am wondering how much ribose we ingest as food? (Deoxy)Ribose is found in the backbone of DNA and RNA. So, we eat ribose as part of the nucleic acid found in plant and animal foods. While protein, lipid, and sugar content is well analyzed for many staples we consume, I cannot find any numbers on ribose or DNA/RNA. Does anybody know of a reference to shed some light? For example, how many (milli)grams ribose is in a steak or a salad? I'm thinking about this since ribose is a more reactive sugar than glucose. It can thus cause more unhealthy additions (glycations) to other biomolecules when in circulation, so the quantity take up might matter.

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PS: Maybe the lack of quantitative data leads people to the false belief that they don't eat DNA on a daily basis? ;-)

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    $\begingroup$ Ribose is a sugar. The "-ose" ending gives it away. $\endgroup$ – Bryan Krause♦ Oct 27 '20 at 19:22
  • $\begingroup$ Sure, but while there's plenty of information on the weight of glucose, starch, glycogen,.. we eat, I couldn't find any on the mass of ribose consumed. $\endgroup$ – SeanJ Oct 27 '20 at 19:24
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    $\begingroup$ Note that DNA contains deoxyribose not ribose. I encourage you to edit your question to correct that and to add information about why you want to know this — i.e. why you think this is a significant question and appropriate for this site rather than one focused on nutrition. In addition, nutritional information typically describes the total carbohydrate and sugar content — neither of which is equivalent to glucose. $\endgroup$ – tyersome Oct 27 '20 at 22:49
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    $\begingroup$ Who cares? Why do you want to know? What aspect of biology will this illuminate? How would you use an answer, which is presumably related to the percent of tissues that are nucleic acids? Are you assuming the constituents of nucleic acids are absorbed as such in the gut? $\endgroup$ – David Oct 28 '20 at 23:17
  • $\begingroup$ Hi David, thanks for the criticism. Do you have data showing that constituents of nucleic acid are not take up and if so to which degree? $\endgroup$ – SeanJ Nov 1 '20 at 20:45

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