Food matrices can be described as the final composition of a food product which results from complex interactions between compounds found within different ingredients and processing parameters used in production. These factors, not only impact on structure product, but also have potential to alter both structural integrity bioavailability potentially beneficial present, for example, dietary fib...

Previous studies have shown that fructans, a soluble dietary fiber, are beneficial to human health and offer a promising approach for the treatment of some diseases. Fructans are nonreducing carbohydrates composed of fructosyl units and terminated by a single glucose molecule. These carbohydrates may be straight or branched with varying degrees of polymerization. Additionally, fructans are resi...

The human gut microbiota plays a significant role in human health through its ability to digest food ingredients and manufacture metabolites. This can be positive or negative for host welfare. Moreover, the microflora plays an active role in host defense whereby colonization resistance affords protection against pathogens. Prebiotics are nondigestible food ingredients that target beneficial com...

Most plants store starch or Suc as reserve carbohydrates, but about 15% of all flowering plant species store fructans, which are linear and branched polymers of Fru. Among the plants that store fructans are many of significant economic importance, such as cereals (e.g. barley, wheat, and oat), vegetables (e.g. chicory, onion, and lettuce), ornamentals (e.g. dahlia and tulip), and forage grasses...

Linear inulin-type fructan (ITF) prebiotics have a putative role in the prevention of colorectal cancer, whereas relatively little is known about branched fructans. This study aims to investigate the fermentation properties and potential prebiotic activity of branched fructans derived from Agave angustifolia Haw, using the Simulator of Human Intestinal Microbial Ecosystem (SHIME) model. The pro...

The main water-soluble carbohydrates in temperate forage grasses are polymeric fructans. Fructans consist of fructose chains of various chain lengths attached to sucrose as a core molecule. In grasses, fructans are a complex mixture of a large number of isomeric oligomers with a degree of polymerisation ranging from 3 to >100. Accurate monitoring and unambiguous peak identification requires chr...

The ability of grasses to regrow after defoliation by cutting or grazing is a vital factor in their survival and an important trait when they are used as forage crops. In temperate grass species accumulating fructans, defoliation induces the activity of a fructan exohydrolase (FEH) that degrades fructans to serve as a carbon source for regrowth. Here, a cDNA from timothy was cloned, named Pp6-F...

Most plants store starch or Suc as reserve carbohydrates, but about 15% of all flowering plant species store fructans, which are linear and branched polymers of Fru. Among the plants that store fructans are many of significant economic importance, such as cereals (e.g. barley, wheat, and oat), vegetables (e.g. chicory, onion, and lettuce), ornamentals (e.g. dahlia and tulip), and forage grasses...

The paper by Jackson et al. (1999) in the present issue of the British Journal of Nutrition is devoted to the analysis of the effect of inulin on blood lipids in moderately hyperlipidaemic men and women. The hypolipidaemic effect of dietary inulin-type fructans has been suggested by many animal studies, in which either a hypotriacylglycerolaemic, or a hypocholesterolaemic effect was observed wh...