What is a key characteristic of polysaccharides?

Polysaccharides are large carbohydrate molecules composed of long chains of monosaccharide units. A key characteristic of polysaccharides is that they are generally not sweet, unlike monosaccharides and disaccharides which are known for their sweetness. The complexity and size of polysaccharide structures, which often consist of hundreds or thousands of sugar units interconnected, contribute to their lack of a sweet taste because they do not easily bind to the taste receptors that detect sweetness.

While some polysaccharides can be soluble in water, this is not true for all of them. Many polysaccharides, like starch and cellulose, have limited solubility or are even insoluble in water. Furthermore, polysaccharides are not small molecules; rather, they are characterized by their large molecular size. They are also not formed by a single sugar unit; that description applies to monosaccharides. Thus, the quality of being not sweet uniquely identifies polysaccharides among other carbohydrate categories.