Filling the fibre gap: functional and metabolic potential of high amylose wheat

小麦是当今世界种植最广泛的粮食作物，也是交易量最大的谷物。因此，它是提高食品供应的营养质量的完美基础，有助于改善世界各地社区的整体健康状况。商业小麦的选育产生了一种抗性淀粉含量非常高的品种，这是一种膳食纤维，已证明对葡萄糖和脂肪代谢有有益的代谢作用。膳食纤维是我们所拥有的最接近超级食物的东西，它对肠道微生物群、胃肠道癌症和代谢性疾病具有已知的有益影响，但摄入量远低于推荐水平。问题是，这种新型小麦能否填补这种纤维缺口？这种高直链淀粉小麦如果进入食物链，显然具有改善人类健康的巨大潜力，但目前有几个挑战需要克服，例如了解如何将这种高不溶纤维小麦加入面包、饼干和糕点等饮食主食中，并进一步确定人类消费的新陈代谢影响。该项目结合使用尖端食品技术方法和人类志愿者的饮食干预，旨在调查并最大限度地将这种小麦纳入不同食品中；评估这种新型小麦品种的感官品质和消费者态度，并在饮食干预试验中量化食用的降糖效果。

Wheat is the most widely grown food crop and the most traded cereal in the world today. It is therefore a perfect foundation for raising the nutritional quality of the food supply to help improve overall health of communities worldwide. Selective breeding of commercial wheat has produces a variety which is very high in resistant starch, a type of dietary fibre which has documented beneficial metabolic effects for glucose and lipid metabolism. Dietary fibre is the nearest thing we have to a super-food with the known beneficial effects on the gut microbiome, gastrointestinal cancers and metabolic disease, but intakes fall well below recommended levels. The question is, can this new type of wheat can fill this fibre-gap?This high-amylose wheat clearly has a great potential to improve human health if it enters the food chain, but at the moment there are several challenges which need to be overcome such as understanding how to incorporate this high insoluble-fibre wheat into food staples in the diet such as bread, biscuits and pastry, and further define the metabolic effects of consumption in humans.Using a combination of cutting-edge food technology methods and dietary interventions in human volunteers, this project aims to investigate and maximise the incorporation of this wheat into different food products; evaluate the sensory qualities and consumer attitudes to this novel wheat variety and quantitate the glucose lowering effects of consumption in a dietary intervention trial.