Dear Tim, From a carbohydrate chemistry point of view, I'm afraid the answer is yes since sucrose does react with water according to: C12H22O11 + H2O ---> C6H12O6 (Gluc.) + C6H12O6 (Fruc.) so one O and 2 H's in either the glucose or the fructose comes from water. If one dissolves sucrose (= saccharose, a disaccharide) in water, sucrose will start to become hydrolysed into D-glucose (C6H12O6) and D-fructose (C6H2O6). This reaction consumes one mol equivalent of water per mol equivalent sucrose (C12H22O11), so the 18O composition of the product will change and the degree of this change will depend how much of the sucrose was hydrolysed before the reaction was stopped. Before anybody says it, I know this reaction is pH dependent, i.e. the reaction rate is directly proportional to the H+ concentration; but it will take place even in 'pure' water albeit slow. One can follow the reaction quite easily with a polarimeter as the polarisation angle of the (pure sucrose) solution (+65°) becomes smaller and smaller and eventually (at equilibrium) ends up being -20°. While on this subject, again for reasons of sugar chemistry, I would be cautious even when it comes to monosaccharides such as D-glucose since glucose dissolved in water undergoes a change from alpha- to beta-glucose involving an opening of the ring at the acetal-O between C5 and C1. On paper, this step does require a "helper" molecule of water but I don't think anybody has ever looked at this by e.g. dissolving D-glucose in 18O-labelled water. Best regards, Wolfram PS: Apologies should you have received this message in similar form the 2nd time. When I posted my answer originally, the list server returned an error.