Engineering Digestion: Multiscale Processes of Food Digestion

Abstract

Food digestion is a complex, multiscale process that has recently become of interest to the food industry due to the developing links between food and health or disease. Food digestion can be studied by using either in vitro or in vivo models, each having certain advantages or disadvantages. The recent interest in food digestion has resulted in a large number of studies in this area, yet few have provided an in-depth, quantitative description of digestion processes. To provide a framework to develop these quantitative comparisons, a summary is given here between digestion processes and parallel unit operations in the food and chemical industry. Characterization parameters and phenomena are suggested for each step of digestion. In addition to the quantitative characterization of digestion processes, the multiscale aspect of digestion must also be considered. In both food systems and the gastrointestinal tract, multiple length scales are involved in food breakdown, mixing, absorption. These different length scales influence digestion processes independently as well as through interrelated mechanisms. To facilitate optimized development of functional food products, a multiscale, engineering approach may be taken to describe food digestion processes. A framework for this approach is described in this review, as well as examples that demonstrate the importance of process characterization as well as the multiple, interrelated length scales in the digestion process.

Sialometric and Sialochemical Changes in Morbidly Obese Patients before and after Bariatric Surgery

“…It is known that SBC ≥5 is considered adequate; i.e., it meets the organism's physiological needs. 21 The present study observed that the values from all groups were suitable (greater than 5); therefore, although a lower SBC value could be observed in the E2 group, as compared with groups C and E1, this most likely does not interfere in the saliva's buffering action.…”

Mesoscale modelling of polymer aggregate digestion

“…As a simple way of modelling the enzymatic hydrolysis, we introduce random bond cleavage to the model. We do this by introducing a rate constant k break that the bond between any two beads is broken at each streaming step; if a bond is cleaved, the two beads participating in it are no longer connected via the harmonic potential (1). All bonds are equally susceptible to attack: this mode of enzyme degradation of carbohydrates is known as a multichain attack in the literature [25,26].…”

Modeling Starch Digestograms: Computational Characteristics of Kinetic Models for in vitro Starch Digestion in Food Research

“…It is noteworthy, however, that the kinetics of in vitro salivary‐gastric starch digestion has been investigated and, when modeled (Bhattarai et al., ; Bustos, Vignola, Pérez, & León, ; Tamura et al., ), yielded parameters (for example, rate of digestion and maximum digestible starch) of importance in the analysis of the GIT by in vitro techniques. Bornhorst, Gouseti, Wickham, and Bakalis () additionally clarified the usefulness of salivary‐gastric digestion in engineering, modeling, and understanding digestion, including starch digestion.…”

“…This possibly indicates that structural and/or feed material component changes in the samples during the passage through the pig GIT prevented complete digestion of some starchy materials, assuming that the residence time in the pig GIT was long enough in the study to approximate an infinite time. The pig GIT has been used as an in vivo replica of the human GIT (Bornhorst et al., ), and the presence of undigested or incompletely digested starch in the pigs’ samples could be a pointer to not always assume full digestibility ( D ∞ is 100 g/100 g dry starch) of starchy materials, irrespective of material or processing, when modeling starch digestograms (Liu & Sopade, ). For computational versatility as further discussed below, therefore, maximum digestible starch, D ∞ , is better assumed to be less than or equal to 100 g/100 g dry starch to serve all modeling scenarios instead of being restrictive.…”