Sweetness Lab

Monosaccharaides and disaccharides have a much higher tatse of sweetness than polysaccharides. According to the observations I made, sucrose, glucose, fructose, maltose, galacatose, and lactose had more sweetness then starch and cellulose.  The first six saccharides listed are either monosaccarides or disaccaraides. They range from 30-170 in sweetness. The scale itself ranged from 0-200 in sweetness. Starch and celluolse on the other hand ranged from 10-20, which are polysaccharides. Also, since  polysaccarides have three or more rings, they have less sweetness then monosaccharides and polysaccharides, which have one or two rings. This evidence shows that monosaccardies and disaccarides have more sweetness then polysaccarides.

The more rings the carbohydrate has, the more complex they are, making the body spend more time and energy digesting them. The more rings, the more energy the carbohydrate has to give to the body, so maltose has more energy than fructose, even though fructose is much sweeter. And the less rings, the less amount of benefits it has for the body. So even though fructose is much sweeter than sucrose, sucrose is better for the body.

The testers did not give the same ratings for several reasons. One is that we all have slightly different taste buds, making our ratings different. Also, some may have not rinsed their mouth after every sample, which could alter the effects. Lastly, some testers could have accidentally given the rating they meant, for example, fructose to galactose.

Humans taste sweetness due to certain sensory cells on your tongue that are made to taste sweetness, which are spread around your tongue. Since all of our cells are slightly different, and differ from person to person, this causes our sense of taste to be different from each other.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0072592/