Sugar (sucrose or ordinary sugar) is a natural form of sugar containing fructose and dextrose. All fruits, berries and vegetables contain a mixture of ordinary sugar, fructose and dextrose in varying proportions. Sugar beets and sugar cane have a particularly high content of ordinary sugar, making these plants ideal for sugar production. From a purely chemical point of view, the sugar in a sugar beet is identical to the sugar in, for instance, a banana.
Dextrose, also known as glucose, is the main component of starch. Dextrose is the sugar type that the body absorbs the fastest.
Fructose is the sweetest of all natural sugar types. It is particularly effective at enhancing the flavour of fruit and berries.
| Name | Synonyms | Production | Relative sweetness | Energy content, kJ/g |
| Sugar | Sucrose | Extraction (diffusion) of sugar beets or sugar cane using hot water | 1.0 | 17 |
| Dextrose | Glucose | Degradation (hydrolysis) of wheat, potato or corn starch with acid and/or enzymes | 0.6-0.7 | 17 |
| Fructose | Fruit sugar | Sucrose is first degraded (hydrolysis or inversion) into glucose and fructose using enzymes or acid. This is followed by filtering out the fructose and enzymatic conversion of the glucose into fructose. | 1.0-1.3 | 17 |
| Maltose | Malt sugar | Degradation (hydrolysis) of starch | 0.5 | 17 |
| Lactose | Milk sugar | Extracted from whey, a by-product of cheese production | 0.4 | 17 |
| Tagatose | Extracted from lactose | 0.9 | 6 | |
| Trehalose | Enzymatic conversion of starch | 0.4-0.5 | 17 | |
| Inverted sugar | Invert | Degradation (inversion) of sucrose using enzymes or acid into equal quantities of glucose and fructose | 1.0 | 17 |
| Glucose syrup | Starch syrup, glucose | Degradation (hydrolysis) of wheat starch or corn starch using acid and/or enzymes. | 0.4-0.6 | 17* |
| Isoglucose | Corn syrup, High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) | Based on glucose syrup. Part of the glucose (42 or 55%) is converted (isomerised) into fructose using enzymes | 0.8-1.0 | 17* |
| Mannitol | Hydrogenation of fructose. Hydrogenation is a chemical process where the sugar molecules (fructose) are fed with hydrogen in the form of a so-called alcohol group. This is the origin of the term sugar alcohols. | 0.6-0.7 | 10 | |
| Xylitol | Birch sugar | Hydrogenation (see under Mannitol) of xylose produced from birch pulp or pulp from other deciduous trees. | 0.9-1.0 | 10 |
| Lactitol | Hydrogenation (see under Mannitol) of lactose | 0.4 | 10 | |
| Sorbitol | Hydrogenation (see under Mannitol) of glucose | 0.6 | 10 | |
| Isomalt | Enzymatic processing of sucrose | 0.5-0.6 | 10 | |
| Maltitol | Hydrogenation (see under Mannitol) of maltose | 0.8 | 10 | |
| Maltitol syrup, sorbitol syrup | Hydrogenation (see under Mannitol) of starch-based syrup with high maltose content | 0.6-0.8 | 10* |
* Calculated on basis of dry substance
