Meeting Abstract - Poster Presentation
New rapid Glycemic TNO Index method (GTI) for prediction of Glycemic Index and measurement of carbohydrate digestibility Over the last years the Glycemic Index (GI) of food and the digestibility of carbohydrates has become an important issue for the food industry. Products with a low GI and slowly digestible carbohydrates can play a role in the prevention of obesity and diabetes. TNO has developed an in-vitro method that gives a good indication of the Glycemic Index and digestibility of a carbohydrate containing food products. This method is based on the well known and widely recognized method of Englyst. The Englyst method is an in-vitro method for the determination of rapidly, slowly, and non-degradable starch. TNO has made two major improvements to the Englyst method. The first improvement is the use of a microbial mix of enzymes capable of converting all digestible carbohydrates present in foods. The second improvement is the analysis of released glucose at specific time points. From these data the rate of digestion and the Glycemic Index of a food product can be calculated. This novel method was tested for various pure carbohydrates and different kinds of carbohydrate containing food products demonstrating that Glycemic Index values obtained with the TNO method corresponded well (correlation r(^2) = 0.85) with results obtained from human studies. The TNO method is therefore very suitable for the pre-screening of carbohydrate ingredients. The next development will be the improvement of this method to determine the total dietary fibre content of foods in a way better than the currently accepted methods, i.e. inclusive all types of resistant starch (RS1-4) and low-molecular weight fibres, like FOS, GOS and resistant maltodextrin. |