ABSTRACT
Whole grain cereals, legumes, fruit, and vegetables contain a wide range of carbohydrates essential for health. While carbohydrates are a diverse and complex family of compounds, the major classes of importance to human nutrition are sugars (glucose, sucrose, fructose) and sugar polyols (sorbitol and mannitol), oligosaccharides especially galactooligosaccharides (GOS) and fructooligosaccharides (FOS), and the polysaccharides (starch and nonstarch polysaccharides [NSP]) and resistant starch (RS).1-3
In relation to the health of the gastrointestinal tract, the long-chain indigestible carbohydrates-NSP (dietary …ber) and RS-have attracted a great deal of worldwide research attention. Over the last decade, the short-chain carbohydratesFOS and GOS-have also become a major area of research interest.
