Sunday 3 August 2014

HEALTH & WELLNESS: New Measurement Methods Address Low Fiber Intake

New Measurement Methods Address Low Fiber Intake
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In the United States, 90 percent of adults and children do not meet the recommended daily intake of fiber, with the average daily intake at approximately half of recommended amounts. This is significant, considering deficiency in dietary fiber is associated with increased risk of heart disease, increased hypertension, stroke, obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Correctly measuring dietary fiber in foods can aid in raising consumer awareness of the nutritional content and specifically the dietary fiber content in the food they consume. However, a major problem in developing an accurate method for the measurement of dietary fiber is that, until recently, there was little agreement on the definition of fiber.

CODEX Alimentarius—part of the World Health Organization Food and Agriculture Organization (WHO/FAO) and considered the international body that sets guidelines for national regulatory authorities—reached a consensus on the definition of dietary fiber in 2009.

Two commonly used methods to measure total dietary fiber include the Prosky method and the McCleary method. When using the Prosky method, most resistant starch and all non-digestible oligosaccharides are not included, which results in underestimation of dietary fiber in many food types. The McCleary method, introduced in 2009—the same year CODEX established a definition for dietary fiber—measures all components as defined by CODEX.
The Prosky method measures some components of dietary fiber in an incomplete fashion, which can be resolved by replacing the Prosky method with the McCleary method.

In the United States, FDA has proposed to accept the CODEX definition and the accompanying analytical method AOAC 2009.01—and to reject an analytically unmanageable definition given by the Institute of Medicine in 2001. The proposed change will take effect in 2016.

For a closer look at dietary fiber—including its benefits and the different types—download the free special report, “Digesting the Latest on Fiber," from Food Product Design’s FoodTech Toolbox.  

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