What is meant by the phrase "not all carbohydrates are created equal"?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The dietary carbohydrate family includes:
Monosaccharides: single sugars
Disaccharides: sugars composed of pairs of monosaccharides
Polysaccharides: large molecules composed of chains of monosaccharides
Monosaccharides and disaccharides (the sugars) are sometimes called simple carbohydrates, and polysaccharides (starches and fibers) are sometimes called complex carbohydrates.

The three monosaccharides most important in nutrition all have the same numbers and kinds of atoms—each contains 6 carbon atoms, 12 hydrogens, and 6 oxygens (written in shorthand as C6H12O6). The monosaccharides differ in their arrangements of the atoms. These chemical differences account for the differing sweetness of the monosaccharides. A pinch of purified glucose on the tongue gives only a mild sweet flavor, and galactose hardly tastes sweet at all. Fructose, however, is as intensely sweet as honey and, in fact, is the sugar primarily responsible for honey's sweetness.

The disaccharides are pairs of the three monosaccharides just described. Glucose occurs in all three; the second member of the pair is fructose, galactose, or another glucose. These carbohydrates—and all the other energy nutrients—are put together and taken apart by similar chemical reactions: condensation and hydrolysis.

In contrast to the simple carbohydrates just mentioned—the monosaccharides glucose, fructose, and galactose and the disaccharides maltose, sucrose, and lactose—the polysaccharides are slightly more complex, containing many glucose units and, in some cases, a few other monosaccharides strung together. Three types of polysaccharides are important in nutrition: glycogen, starches, and fibers. Glycogen is a storage form of energy in the body; starch is the storage form of energy in plants; and fibers provide structure in stems, trunks, roots, leaves, and skins of plants. Both glycogen and starch are built of glucose units; fibers are composed of a variety of monosaccharides and other carbohydrate derivatives.