The Analysis of Milk Sugars with a Modern Refractive Index Detector and a Carbohydrate Column

Sugar analysis is a common industrial analytical requirement. It is particularly important in the analysis of food products such as milk. Though lactose is the main carbohydrate in milk (1) and was typically the only sugar of concern, recently interest has expanded in analyzing milk products with reduced lactose. The lactose in milk can be reduced by hydrolyzing lactose into two other sugars, glucose and galactose, with an enzyme. The result is a product with reduced lactose that can more easily be consumed by large percentage of the world's population that are lactose intolerant (2).