ABSTRACT
Carbohydrates occur widely in foodstuffs. That is why knowledge of their qualitative and quantitative distribution in fruits, vegetables, honey, alcoholic and soft drinks, dairy products, meat and meat derivatives, and other natural matrices is essential, since they are involved in very important characteristics, such as avor, maturity, quality, authenticity, storage conditions (sugars in their raw state diminish rapidly during storage at room temperature), and so on. Therefore, the analysis of food carbohydrates has been dealt with and reviewed by several authors in the last few years, as books or as chapters of books or as scientic papers in different journals [1-6]. This chapter then aims at compiling and updating the existing methods for the determination of carbohydrates in foods. As an additional contribution, and given its importance in many foodstuffs, special attention has also been devoted to the analysis of starch [7,8], albeit through specic, detailed remarks in each section of the chapter, instead of as an independent section.
