Fructose is a monosaccharide found in nature primarily in fruits. It’s eaten as sucrose (common table sugar), which is composed of equal parts of glucose and fructose. It is the sweetest of the naturally occurring nutritive (caloric) sweeteners and has many unique functional and nutritional properties that make it a valuable food ingredient. Fructose is a hexose, with a chemical formula C6H12O6 identical to that of glucose.
When fructose is attached to a sugar called glucose, it forms sucrose or ‘table sugar.’ Long chains of fructose are called fructans and are found in certain vegetables, wheat, and other foods.
Fructose is also found in sucrose (table sugar), honey, agave nectar, fruit juices, fruit juice concentrates, pure crystalline fructose and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).
The fruit sugar of fructose
