ABSTRACT
Very recently, the European Commission authorized the use of a dextran preparation as a new food ingredient for bakery applications (1). This clearly illustrates the renewed interest in dextran as a food ingredient, in addition to the nutritional applications of glucooligosaccharides. In fact, dextran oligosaccharides and isomaltooligosaccharides, which are closely related in structure as they present a high proportion of α-1,6 glucosidic linkages, are partly or totally resistent to attack by humans’ and animals’ digestive enzymes. They are not absorbed in the small intestine. In the large intestine, they are then metabolized by the colonic bacterial flora and fermented into short-chain fatty acids (2, 3). Such nondigestible glucooligosaccharides are regarded as prebiotics or colonic foods. A prebiotic is “a nondigestible food ingredient that beneficially affects the host by selectively stimulating the growth and/or activity of one or a limited number of bacteria in the colon, and thus improves host health” (4). On the other hand, a colonic food is a food ingredient enterring the colon and serving as substrate for the endogenous bacteria, thus indirectly providing the host with energy, metabolic substrates, and essential micronutrients.
