New Methodologies For Gastrointestinal Studies Could Lead To Development of Functional Foods

17 Aug 2016 --- The new standardized methodologies from COST Action InfoGest, a group of food scientists, nutritionists, physiologists and gastroenterologists, aims to improve the current scientific knowledge on how foods digested.

It hopes the new research will lead to the development of smarter foods dedicated to specific populations.

“The digestive process is something of a black box,” said Dr Didier Dupont, a senior scientist at INRA Agrocampus in France. “We need to know more about the role of food in human health and this means focusing on what happens in the gastrointestinal tract.”

Despite previous studies in this area, different approaches were used in each study, making it impossible to compare results from different groups.

But with the standardized methodologies now in place, COST Action InfoGest hopes this will allow researchers to study how foods are disintegrated during digestion in more detail than ever.

“Several research groups in the world have developed their own models to study digestion. All these models differ from the duration of the different steps and the physicochemical conditions used making the comparison of results from one study to another impossible,” Dr Didier Dupont told NutritionInsight: “This is why a group of 29 world-known experts on digestion have worked on a consensus model that will allow comparison between studies.”

Dupont explained that the new model is the most accurate yet, and will allow researchers all over the world to share their results.

“All the parameters of the model (pH, duration of gastric and intestinal phase, digestive enzyme and bile concentrations etc) have been discussed for 2 years and set up according to human data available in the literature,” Dupont explained, “Since its publication, groups all over the world have used the model and the publication of the model is a hot paper with more than 100 citations in 2 years.”

Dupont hopes that results from various studies will lead to the creation of nutritional and functional food, targetted at different needs.

“Not everyone has the same nutritional needs,” he explains, “Understanding the fate of food in the gastrointestinal tract will allow us to better understand the mechanism of action of functional foods and the design of foods particularly adapted to the nutritional needs of some populations.”

Dupont continued: “For instance, foods that will be rapidly transferred from the stomach to the small intestine and hydrolyzed will allow a fast release of nutrients that could be beneficial for elderly people or athletes. In contrast, food that would stay longer in the stomach would generate satiation and/or satiety and would be particularly well adapted for diabetic and overweight people.”

The results of these studies will come at a time when consumers are more conscious than ever about the health benefits of the food they are eating. 

“There is a huge interest of the consumer to better know the benefits of the food he eats on his health,” Dupont said, adding “And we strongly believe that understanding the fate of food in the gastrointestinal tract, determining how and where nutrients and bioactives are released in the gut, how they will interact with the immune system and the intestinal microbiota will strengthen our knowledge on what our food make on our health.”

by Hannah Gardiner