All carbohydrates are made from small building blocks called simple sugars or monosaccharides.
When two building blocks or monosaccharides join together they form a disaccharide. The most common disaccharide that we are all familiar with is what we know as sucrose or table sugar.
Apart from sugars, other types of carbohydrates are made up of long chains of monosaccharides or disaccharides, all joined together in different combinations – that can often be very complex – these are called polysaccharides. They usually contain from 10 up to several thousand monosaccharides arranged in chains.
The main types of polysaccharides you have probably heard of already are: Starch, cellulose, pectin, gums and fibre.
Monosaccharides
There are three main monosaccharides that combine to form many of the different types of sugars or disaccharides found naturally in foods.
