Fructose is an example of which type of saccharide?

Fructose is classified as a monosaccharide because it is a simple sugar consisting of a single sugar unit or molecule. Monosaccharides are the most basic form of carbohydrates and cannot be hydrolyzed into smaller carbohydrate units. They are the building blocks for more complex carbohydrates. Fructose, along with glucose and galactose, is one of the primary types of monosaccharides that the body utilizes for energy and metabolic processes.

In contrast, oligosaccharides consist of a small number of monosaccharide units (typically 2 to 10) bonded together, while polysaccharides are long chains of monosaccharide units (more than 10) and serve more complex roles in energy storage and structural components, such as starch and cellulose. Disaccharides, on the other hand, consist of exactly two monosaccharide units linked together, such as sucrose (which is composed of glucose and fructose) and lactose (which consists of glucose and galactose). Each of these options represents a distinct category of carbohydrates based on the number of sugar units they contain, with fructose falling into the category of monosaccharides.