Abstract:To establish a method for determination of the content of water- soluble polysaccharides in auxiliary hypoglycemic health food, the effects of extraction method, concentration of ethanol for precipitation, deproteinization method and coloration method on the determined values of polysaccharides content were studied. Result showed that the phenol- sulfuric acid method was chosen as the coloration method, with the conditions as follows: ultrasonic power 250 W, extraction time 60 min, 80% ethanol concentration for precipitation, and 1/10 polysaccharide extraction volume, 5% trichloroacetic acid concentration for deproteinization, deproteinization once, standing time 2 h, and the result was good. The standard curve regression equation was A=0.0144C-0.0655, the calibration curve had a good linearity in the range of 6.61-79.28 μg/mL for glucose with the correlation coefficient (r) of 0.9996, and the average recovery at the spiked concentrations was 98.47% with RSD of 1.64% The average content of water- soluble polysaccharides from the auxiliary hypoglycemic health food was 11.49% with RSD of 2.31%. This method was simple and accurate with a good repetion, which can be used to determine the content of polysaccharides in auxiliary hypoglycemic health products.