ABSTRACT

Resistant maltodextrin (RM) is a low calorie food ingredient that in many ways behaves similar to dietary …ber. RM contains a mixture of oligosaccharides and polysaccharides. Due to the chemical composition of RM, determination of its …ber content requires a speci…c analytical method.8 RM is a …ne water soluble powder with little taste that has potential utility as a low calorie ingredient in a variety of foods and drinks. Because RM is recalcitrant to digestion by the host enzymes, the energy gain from RM intake depends on the activities of the large intestinal gut microbiota. Although gut microbiota appears unique for each individual, the main metabolic pathways encoded by the gut metagenome appear preserved.15 Nevertheless, it is feasible that subjects consuming the same amounts of RM derive di¬erent amounts of energy from it due to varying e²ciencies of their resident microbiota in fermenting this substrate. RM supplementation might have a prebiotic e¬ect by enriching for microbes such as bi…dobacteria that are rich in glycohydrolases21 that can e²ciently degrade RM. Indeed, a bi…dogenic

Contents

19.1 Introduction 269 19.2 Material and Methods 270

19.2.1 Study Design 270 19.2.2 Fecal Collections 271 19.2.3 Energy Measurements 271 19.2.4 Microbiota Analysis 271 19.2.5 Statistical Analysis 272

19.3 Results 273 19.4 Discussion 276 Acknowledgments 277 References 277

e¬ect has previously been shown for resistant starch III polymorph B,17 but only a bi…dogenic trend failing to reach signi…cance was reported for RM6. Ruminococcus bromii numbers were shown to increase upon RS consumption in another study.1 RM has also been shown to increase fecal bulking6 and when ingested with fatty meals it suppresses the postprandial elevation of blood triacylglycerol levels.14 ´e gut microbiota is thought to a¬ect human health, particularly through the generation of bene…cial fermentation products, such as butyric acid from the breakdown of nutrients that reach the colon.9 Although the health e¬ects of some dietary components, including dietary …ber, might depend on the activities of an individual’s particular gut microbiota, little is known about interactions between dietary substances and the composition of the microbiota. Directed changes in the intestinal physiology through modi…cation of the gut microbiota by dietary interventions (pre-and probiotics) o¬er the potential for disease prevention. Many products aiming to promote intestinal health by improving microbiota composition are already commercially available; however, we are only at the beginning of fully understanding the complexity of microbiota composition and activities.