Lactose what type of sugar

Over the last 15 years she has been a contributing author to a number of nutritional and cookery publications including BBC Good Food. Jo Lewin is a registered nutritionist RNutr with the Association for Nutrition with a specialism in public health. All health content on bbcgoodfood. If you have any concerns about your general health, you should contact your local health care provider. See our website terms and conditions for more information.

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Home How to Guide Sugar explained. Use our handy guide to shed some light on the secrets of sugar… Advertisement. Claim the offer. Diabetes, obesity, heart disease, metabolic diseases and even some cancers are linked to excessive sugar consumption. Sugar is the generic name given to a type of carbohydrate which is naturally sweet in varying degrees. The foods we consume are broken down by the body; sugar is one of the major types of macronutrients that provide energy through this metabolic process.

Harvard Health Publishing explains that there are two subtypes of sugar. Monosaccharides or simple sugars have one molecule and include glucose, fructose and galactose. Disaccharides have two molecules consisting of a combination of monosaccharides.

For example, sucrose is made of a molecule each of glucose and fructose, lactose is made of one molecule of glucose and another of galactose, and maltose is made of two glucose molecules. Most fruits and some vegetables naturally consist of glucose and fructose and so does honey and the commonly used table sugar. Lactose is found in dairy products and maltose is found in germinating grains. The most commonly available and used of these sugars are glucose, fructose, sucrose and lactose.

Each of them has a very different role to play and contributions to make to your health. A study in the journal Clinical Diabetes explains that once the food you eat is broken down and glucose is released, it stimulates the release of insulin in the pancreas. Lactase, an enzyme, splits lactose into glucose and galactose. Human milk contains 7. Although glucose could be found in several types of foods, lactose is the only source of galactose. Galactose has various biological functions and serves in neural and immunological processes.

Galactose is a component of several macromolecules cerebrosides, gangliosides and mucoproteins , which are important constituents of nerve cells membrane. Galactose is also a component of the molecules present on blood cells that determine the ABO blood types. According to more recent studies, lactose may play a role in the absorption of calcium and other minerals such as copper and zinc, especially during infancy.

Moreover, if it is not digested in the small intestine, lactose may be used by the intestinal microbiota the microorganism population that lives in the digestive tract as a nutrient prebiotic. Lactose and other milk sugars also promote the growth of bifidobacteria in the gut and may play a life-long role in countering the aging-associated decline of some immune functions.

Sources: Amaretti et al.