Lactate: An Energy Highway For Distributing Carbohydrate

The first carbohydrate after a glucose meal gets into the blood as lactate because a) that's what intestinal cells do and because b) most of the glucose is captured by the liver before it is released into the blood for the muscles, where glucose is going to be converted to lactate. This shows that lactate is just a major energy highway for distributing carbohydrate—carbon energy flux.