The determination of carbohydrates or saccharides is of great interest in food analysis due to their importance as macronutrients. Metrohm has developed a straightforward ion chromatographic method using isocratic elution and pulsed amperometric detection (PAD) to sensitively determine water-soluble polyols and sugar alcohols as well as mono-, di- and oligosaccharides in essential and non-essential foodstuffs.