Sugar Components (Lactose) Analysis

Milk and dairy products are an important food group in human nutrition. Milk is a complex liquid food substance secreted by the mammary glands of female mammals. It contains almost all the necessary nutrients to sustain the life and growth of the newborn. In addition to breast milk, cow's milk is the most widely used among the different types of milk.

Among the nutrients in milk, saccharides play an important role. The ratio of saccharides is about 10 percent and all of them are lactose. Lactose is 98 percent of the sugars found in milk. Lactose is important for the development of nervous tissue in the first few months of life. The main role of lactose is to provide the newborn with galactose for the synthesis of nervous structures.

Lactose is an important source of energy and is sometimes referred to simply as milk sugar because it is found in high concentrations in dairy products. Lactose is the primary source of carbohydrates during mammalian development and represents 40 percent of the energy consumed during lactation. People with lactose intolerance have a deficiency of lactose and it is not completely catabolized. Lactose intolerance is an important factor in diet choice for many sick people. For this reason, its content in foods is monitored.

Methods such as polarimetry, gravimetric, mid-infrared, differential pH and enzymatic monitoring are used in lactose analysis. However, all these methods are time consuming as they require extensive sample preparation and cannot distinguish individual sugars. New and more accurate analytical methods have been developed to measure low lactose levels. One of them is the high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method.

Polarimetric methods are based on measuring the specific rotation of polarized light by molecules such as lactose in skimmed and deproteinized milk.

Gravimetric methods are based on the reduction of precipitated copper sulfate to copper oxide by the addition of potassium hydroxide.

Enzymatic methods are based on the joint reaction of the enzymatic hydrolysis of lactose to glucose and galactose, followed by the enzymatic determination of one of the released monosaccharides.

High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is one of the most commonly used techniques. It is particularly widely used to separate a wide variety of carbohydrates in foods. This method allows for the direct detection of carbohydrates because they can absorb low UV wavelengths.

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