Sucrose

What is it?

Sucrose intolerance — congenital sucrase-isomaltase deficiency, CSID — is the inability to break down sucrose, table sugar, and in its full form the starches as well. The symptoms are digestive: bloating, watery diarrhoea, abdominal cramps. It affects children and adults, is often undiagnosed, and is regularly mistaken for irritable bowel syndrome. Hidden sources are sweet drinks, confectionery, cakes, fruit juice and many processed foods — plus all starches where the isomaltase side is affected too.

What a measured sucrose range looks like

Ma (2014) separated sucrose alongside fructose, glucose and sorbitol in four fruits — peach, apple, watermelon and cherry — by HPLC-ELSD, and found sucrose from 15.82 to 106.39 mg/g, the widest range of the four sugars it measured. Four fruits, and a method paper whose point is the separation rather than a composition table.

A dose for comparison

Storey (2007) used 45 g of sucrose as the CONTROL arm of a polyol tolerance trial in 64 adults — a single oral bolus in water. That is useful here for scale rather than for sucrose itself: 45 g is roughly what a large soft drink delivers, and it was the comparison against which xylitol at 50 g produced significant symptoms and 35 g did not.

Where the per-food figures come from

USDA FoodData Central gives sugars per VARIETY, never per brand, and describes the US food supply — so a sucrose level here is the variety's, and a brand can sit anywhere around it. It publishes no FODMAP, oxalate, salicylate or amine value at all.

Source: Ma C. et al. (2014), for sucrose at 15.82-106.39 mg/g in four fruits, a method paper; Storey D. et al. (2007), for the 45 g sucrose control arm of a polyol tolerance trial in 64 adults; USDA FoodData Central, for sugars per variety and never per brand

Frequently asked questions