An enzymatic method for the determination of fructans in foods and food products - Comparison of the results by high performance anion exchange chromatography with pulsed amperemetric detection

We report a new and non-equipment demanding method of measuring the content of fructans as well as the contents of free glucose, free fructose and suc rose in foods and food products enzymatically. This method comprises hydrol ysis of fructans into D-glucose and D-fructose enzymatically and measuremen t of the released sugars enzymatically. Sucrose is hydrolysed by alpha-gluc osidase instead of beta-fructosidase, which is normally used. In addition, sucrose is measured in the form of D-fructose instead of the typical D-gluc ose form, and the fructanase used to hydrolyse the fructans has fewer side effects than the fructanase reported as normally used. The method is tested on ten standard substances and five fructan products, and nine foods and f ood products are also analysed. The enzymatic measurement of the released s ugars is confirmed by measurements done by high performance anion exchange chromatography with pulsed amperemetric detection.