On Wed, 6 Jan 1999, Geoffrey Stanford wrote: > geoff here: there is a difference in sugars: most fruits have fructose, > but cane and beet have sucrose. can anyone expert tell us more about this > difference? which has maple? Fructose and glucose are monosaccharides; sucrose is a disaccharide, which is composed of one molecule of each. Fruits may contain any or all three of these sugars, in different proportions. An orange, for example, contains 5.5g of sucrose, 3.3g fructose, and 2.9g glucose. Since the sucrose will be broken down into equal amounts of fructose and glucose (by the sucrase enzyme) the net result will be slightly more fructose than glucose. I mention this to correct a common misconception that fruits contain *only* fructose. I don't know about maple sugar. Lactose is another disaccharide consisting of glucose plus galactose, which are separated by the enzyme lactase, which many people do not retain into adulthood, or can only produce limited amounts of. Todd Moody [log in to unmask]