Assessing nutritional behavior of foods through in vitro and in vivo studies

Food Structure Engineering and Design for Improved Nutrition, Health and Wellbeing presents new insights on the development of new healthy foods and the understanding of food structure effect on nutrition, health and wellbeing. Sections cover a) New ingredients, typicity and ethnicity of foods in different cultures and geographic regions; b) New and innovative strategies for food structure development; c) Strategies to address the challenges for healthier food products, such the reduction of sugar, salt and fats; d) Assessment of health effect of foods by in vitro and in vivo tests, and more.

International audience

Inglés. The nutritional quality of food depends on its composition but also on its ability to be digested and of the nutrients to be absorbed. Although digestive physiology has been the subject of numerous studies in the past, the mechanisms of food disintegration in the digestive tract remains unclear. During digestion chemical, enzymatic and mechanical phenomena occur simultaneously. Understanding the mechanisms linked to digestion remains an ambitious objective and the growing number of studies on digestion over the past ten years bears witness to this. Studying digestion requires the use of in vitro or in vivo models. The choice of digestion model depends on many factors particularly ethical, technical or financial. The aim of this chapter is to describe the different models existing for digestion and absorption studies. This summary highlights the great diversity of digestion models since it is important to know the advantages and the limits of these in order to set up the model answering better the objectives of the study to be conducted.