Dietary fibre enrichment in foods for targeted health benefits: relating physical and physiological properties of hydrocolloids

亲水胶体(主要是可溶性非淀粉多糖)是一种多功能的天然食品成分或添加成分。它们通过其大分子行为，以粘性、凝胶性和胶体稳定性等物理属性的形式向食品提供技术功能。与此同时，这些亲水胶体作为膳食纤维，对健康有多种好处，包括增加饱腹感，餐后血糖下降，通过胆汁酸结合降低血液胆固醇水平，在结肠发酵产生短链脂肪酸，降低结直肠癌的发病率，以及许多其他健康好处。在加拿大，我们平均只摄入推荐量的一半膳食纤维(可溶和不可溶)，因此在食物中补充有益纤维是一个重要和可行的健康促进策略，因为增加全谷物、豆类、蔬菜和水果(我们主要的天然膳食来源)的消费不太可能弥补现代饮食中的这一不足。 我们研究的目的是探索溶液中亲水胶体的流变性和水性与其营养功能之间的关系，主要通过体外分析来评估，通过补充资金和活性，与体内试验相关联；并探索将亲水胶体浓缩到食品中以提供健康益处的新方法。虽然多糖的结构-物理功能关系已经被详细研究并且众所周知，但分子结构和生理功能之间的关系还不是很清楚。在这项研究的下一阶段，选定的具有健康益处(主要是血糖控制，从我们的体内研究或文献中进行评估)并跨越一系列分子结构的亲水胶体将使用我们的体外模型来模拟胃和肠道的降解和稀释，以表征它们的结构特性和流变性。食物基质和其他食物和饮食成分的影响也将包括在内。这项研究的预期意义将是更根本地了解分子结构和生理功能之间的关系，以便针对适当的亲水胶体提高在食品中的利用。此外，将利用所获得的关于胃肠道提供具体健康益处的理想结构/行为的增强知识，探索将营养相关浓度的亲水胶体纳入食品系统的新战略(即，将营养功能重新纳入技术功能)。

Hydrocolloids (mostly soluble, non-starch polysaccharides) are multi-functional natural food components or added ingredients. They deliver technological functionality to foods in the form of physical attributes like viscosity, gelation, and colloidal stability through their macromolecular behaviour. At the same time, these hydrocolloids act as dietary fibre and deliver a multitude of health benefits, including increased satiety, blood glucose attenuation after consumption of a meal, reduction in blood cholesterol levels through bile acid binding, fermentation in the colon to produce short-chain fatty acids, reduced incidence of colorectal cancers, and many other health benefits. In Canada, on average we only consume half of the recommended amount of dietary fibre (soluble and insoluble), so supplementation of beneficial fibres into foods is an important and viable health-promoting strategy as it is unlikely that enhanced consumption of whole grains, legumes, vegetables and fruits (our principal natural dietary sources) can make up this deficiency in the modern diet. The objectives of our research are to explore the relationship between rheological and aqueous properties of hydrocolloids in solution and their nutritional functionality, as assessed primarily by in vitro analyses correlated, through complementary funding and activity, with in vivo trials; and, to explore novel means of enrichment of hydrocolloids into foods to deliver health benefits. Although polysaccharide structure-physical function relationships have been studied in detail and are well known, the relationship between molecular structure and physiological functionality is not well understood. During the next phase of this research, selected hydrocolloids with demonstrated health benefits (primarily glycemia control, as assessed either from our in vivo studies or from the literature) and spanning a range of molecular structures will be characterized for both their structural properties and their rheological properties using our in vitro model to simulate gastric and intestinal degradation and dilution. The effect of food matrix and other food and dietary components will also be included. The expected significance of this will be to understand more fundamentally the relationship between molecular structure and physiological function so that appropriate hydrocolloids are targeted for enhanced utilization in foods. In addition, novel strategies for incorporation of nutritionally-relevant concentrations of hydrocolloids into food systems will be explored using the enhanced knowledge gained regarding ideal stucture/ behaviour in the gastrointestinal tract that delivers specific health benefits (i.e., parlaying nutritional functionality back into technological functionality).