Role of lipid structure and physical properties in digestive processes impacting nutrition

膳食脂质在健康和疾病中起着重要作用。然而，我们无法充分界定潜在的关系。此外，虽然脂质必须在胃肠道中溶解才能被吸收，但对脂质消化的生物化学和生物物理过程知之甚少。特别是，很少考虑脂质结构和物理性质在确定食物代谢效应中的作用。这种缺乏了解阻碍了我们设计优化脂质吸收的食品和天然健康产品的能力。例如，期望增加脂溶性维生素和营养品的吸收，或使促进心血管疾病风险和肥胖的脂肪酸的吸收最小化。定制脂质消化以触发饱腹感机制的潜力，即最大限度地减少食物摄入以帮助对抗超重和肥胖的迅速增长的发病率的策略，也是令人兴奋的。 本研究旨在确定脂质结构和物理性质对影响脂质吸收和饱腹感的吸收前消化事件的作用。使用消化和补充的化学和物理分析的体外模型，脂质消化动力学将在脂质结构和结晶度，消化率和营养增溶方面进行研究。脂质结构和饱腹感之间的关系也将使用动物模型进行探索。这项工作还通过寻求体外和体内模型之间的相关性来推进该领域的方法。从长远来看，它将使人们能够更好地了解消化水平上的脂质结构-功能关系，以支持通过食物结构化方法优化营养结果的商业产品的开发。这些知识将支持循证食品和天然保健产品的开发。这项研究还允许在食品营养界面的项目上培训几名本科生和研究生。

Dietary lipids play important roles in health and disease. However, we are unable to adequately define the underlying relationships. Also, although lipids must be solubilized in the gastrointestinal tract before they can be absorbed, not enough is known about the biochemical and biophysical processes of lipid digestion. In particular, the role of lipid structure and physical properties in determining the metabolic effect of foods is rarely considered. This lack of understanding hampers our ability to design foods and natural health products that optimize lipid absorption. For example, it would be desirable to increase the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins and nutraceuticals or to minimize the absorption of fatty acids that promote cardiovascular disease risk and obesity. The potential to tailor lipid digestion to trigger satiety mechanisms, i.e. a strategy to minimize food intake to help combat the burgeoning incidences of overweight and obesity, is also exciting. This research aims to define the role of lipid structure and physical properties on pre-absorptive digestive events that impact lipid absorption and satiety. Using in vitro models of digestion and complementary chemical and physical analyses, lipid digestion dynamics will be studied in relation to lipid structure and crystallinity, digestibility and nutraceutical solubilization. The relationship between lipid structure and satiety will also be explored using an animal model. This work also advances methods in the field by seeking correlations between in vitro and in vivo models. Long-term, it will enable a better understanding of lipid structure-function relationships at the level of digestion to support the development of commercial products that optimize nutritional outcomes through food structuring approaches. This knowledge will support the development of evidence-based food and natural health products. The research also allows for the training of several undergraduate and graduate students on projects at the food-nutrition interface.