Functional food properties of non-digestible oligosaccharides: a consensus report from the ENDO project (DGXII AIRII-CT94-1095)

Abstract

This paper results from the final phase of the ENDO project (DGXII AIRII-CT94-1095), a European Commission-funded project on non-digestible oligosaccharides (NDO). All participants in the programme met to perform a consensus exercise on the possible functional food properties of NDO. Topics studied during the project (including a workshop on probiotics and prebiotics) and related aspects, for which considerable evidence has been generated recently, were evaluated on the basis of existing published scientific evidence. There was a general consensus that: (1) there is strong evidence for a prebiotic effect of NDO in human subjects. A prebiotic effect was defined as a food-induced increase in numbers and/or activity predominantly of bifidobacteria and lactic acid bacteria in the human large intestine; (2) there is strong evidence for the impact that NDO have on bowel habit; (3) there is promising evidence that consumption of inulin-type fructans may result in increased Ca absorption in man; (4) there are preliminary indications that inulin-type fructans interact with the functioning of lipid metabolism; (5) there is preliminary evidence in experimental animals of a preventive effect against colon cancer. Human nutrition studies are needed to substantiate these findings. It was concluded that the nutritional properties of NDO may prove to be a key issue in nutritional research in the future. Functional foods: Non-digestible oligosaccharides: PrebioticsDietary carbohydrates represent a complex group of food components which, besides their usefulness for food technologists, have a variety of physiological and nutritional properties in man. According to the scientists who participated in the discussion, it has become clear over the last decade that the group of non-digestible oligosaccharides (NDO) play, or are likely to play, an important nutritional role (Cummings et al. 1997). As is shown in Table 1, NDO are composed of a variety of monosaccharides that are linked in several ways (type of bond and chain length) and typically are composed of a polydisperse set of comparable molecules differing only in chain length. The available NDO preparations are either (1) extracted from natural sources (e.g. inulin, soyabean oligosaccharides) followed by partial enzymic hydrolysis (e.g. xylo-oligosaccharides, oligofructose, malto-oligosaccharides), or (2) synthesized by subjecting disaccharides such as lactose or sucrose to the action of transferases (e.g. transgalacto-oligosaccharides).NDO such as the fructans and oligosaccharides from beans have always been present naturally in human plant foods, although total daily intakes are largely unknown. In populations consuming a Western-style diet, the intake of inulin-type fructans has been estimated to range between 1 and 4 g/d (Van Loo et al. 1995).Although differing in their chemical characteristics, all the NDO resist digestion in the human small intestine and they are potential substrates for the bacteria that colonize the large intestine.Here, we report the consensus reached b...

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