stachyose

1 9.9

A sugar found in beans and some vegetables like Chinese artichoke

noun

Specialized

: estachiosa

Any disaccharide or polysaccharide that isn't broken down (such as the raffinose and stachyose in beans and many other gas-causing foods) remains inside the gut, providing food for our gut bacteria.

Examples

Secondly, the carbohydrate component contains raffinose and stachyose, two agalactosides that are not degraded by human digestive enzymes.

Academic text (2001)
Stachyose is a stachyose sugar found in foods like beans and artichokes.
Many vegetables, including the Chinese artichoke, contain stachyose, which is difficult for some people to digest.
In addition to raffinose, stachyose is another carbohydrate that contributes to gas production when consuming legumes.

Surface Forms

stachyose singular

stachyoses plural

Morphology

stachyose = Stachys (opaque) = stachy + ose

The element 'stachy-' refers to a specific plant name and '-ose' is a specialist chemical suffix meaning 'sugar'; the components are obscure to average learners so the meaning is not recoverable from parts.

Etymology

Stachyose comes from the Greek word stachys, meaning 'spike' or 'ear of grain', and the ending -ose which means 'sugar', as in glucose and fructose. So stachyose is a sugar named after a plant, which helps explain why it is found in tubers and beans.