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This approach is followed for most of the foods containing starch. In foods where almost no starch is present but only a mixture of mono-, disaccharides, oligosaccharides and non starch polysaccharides, step 2 and 3 are not necessary.

If there is no need to specify sugars and starch, an alternative approach can be followed: the sugars (and also the starch) are hydrolyzed and the monosaccharide units are determined. Carbohydrates will then be expressed as monosaccharide equivalents.

Also when sugars and starch are determined individually, available carbohydrates are sometimes expressed as monosaccharide equivalents. In that case, di-, oligosaccharides and starch can be converted to monosaccharides by using a specific conversion factor. Often a factor of 1.11 (specific for starch) is used, however for di- and oligo-saccharides applying specific factors (1.05) may be better.

When also fibres are analysed separately (for methods see next section), it is possible to calculate ‘total carbohydrates’ values by summation of free sugars, starch and fibre values.

After all free sugars and starch values are determined, available carbohydrates can be calculated by summation of these sugar and starch values: Available carbohydrates = sum of free sugars (mono-, di- and appropriate* oligosaccharides) and starch.

* Note that some oligosaccharides are not available to the body