Dietary carbohydrates are a group of chemically defined substances with a range of physical and physiological properties and health benefits. As with other macronutrients, the primary classification of dietary carbohydrate is based on chemistry, that is character of individual monomers, degree of polymerization (DP) and type of linkage (alpha or beta), as agreed at the Food and Agriculture Organization/World Health Organization Expert Consultation in 1997. This divides carbohydrates into three main groups, sugars (DP 1-2), oligosaccharides (short-chain carbohydrates) (DP 3-9) and polysaccharides (DP> or =10). Within this classification, a number of terms are used such as mono- and disaccharides, polyols, oligosaccharides, starch, modified starch, non-starch polysaccharides, total carbohydrate, sugars, etc. While effects of carbohydrates are ultimately related to their primary chemistry, they are modified by their physical properties. These include water solubility, hydration, gel formation, crystalline state, association with other molecules such as protein, lipid and divalent cations and aggregation into complex structures in cell walls and other specialized plant tissues. A classification based on chemistry is essential for a system of measurement, predication of properties and estimation of intakes, but does not allow a simple translation into nutritional effects since each class of carbohydrate has overlapping physiological properties and effects on health. This dichotomy has led to the use of a number of terms to describe carbohydrate in foods, for example intrinsic and extrinsic sugars, prebiotic, resistant starch, dietary fibre, available and unavailable carbohydrate, complex carbohydrate, glycaemic and whole grain. This paper reviews these terms and suggests that some are more useful than others. A clearer understanding of what is meant by any particular word used to describe carbohydrate is essential to progress in translating the growing knowledge of the physiological properties of carbohydrate into public health messages.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 66. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 06 January 2026.
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#819,484
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Outputs from European Journal of Clinical Nutrition
#304
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#1,466
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Outputs of similar age from European Journal of Clinical Nutrition
#2
of 35 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,307,719 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 97th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,812 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 22.2. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 93% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 35 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 94% of its contemporaries.
