Fiber and Prebiotics: Mechanisms and Health Benefits

By J. Slavin. Nutrients, 2013

2,053 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The health benefits of dietary fiber have long been appreciated. Higher intakes of dietary fiber are linked to less cardiovascular disease and fiber plays a role in gut health, with many effective laxatives actually isolated fiber sources. Higher intakes of fiber are linked to lower body weights. Only polysaccharides were included in dietary fiber originally, but more recent definitions have included oligosaccharides as dietary fiber, not based on their chemical measurement as dietary fiber by the accepted total dietary fiber (TDF) method, but on their physiological effects. Inulin, fructo-oligosaccharides, and other oligosaccharides are included as fiber in food labels in the US. Additionally, oligosaccharides are the best known “prebiotics”, “a selectively fermented ingredient that allows specific changes, both in the composition and/or activity in the gastrointestinal microflora that confers benefits upon host well-bring and health.” To date, all known and suspected prebiotics are carbohydrate compounds, primarily oligosaccharides, known to resist digestion in the human small intestine and reach the colon where they are fermented by the gut microflora. Studies have provided evidence that inulin and oligofructose (OF), lactulose, and resistant starch (RS) meet all aspects of the definition, including the stimulation of Bifidobacterium, a beneficial bacterial genus. Other isolated carbohydrates and carbohydrate-containing foods, including galactooligosaccharides (GOS), transgalactooligosaccharides (TOS), polydextrose, wheat dextrin, acacia gum, psyllium, banana, whole grain wheat, and whole grain corn also have prebiotic effects.

Subfields: Molecular Biology, Nutrition and Dietetics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f49744c895f99099d6fb8824507a227e85a11c44

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Citations in the corpus

Dietary Fiber Concentrates from Fruit and Vegetable By-products: Processing, Modification, and Application as Functional Ingredients (2018, background): “Regularly, all the considered prebiotics are associated to the DF; however, not all the dietary fibers exhibit prebiotic effects (Slavin 2013).”
Dietary fiber and prebiotics and the gastrointestinal microbiota (2017, background): “Some dietary fibers can also be classified as prebiotic.(9) Prebiotics are defined as “selectively fermented ingredients that result in specific changes, in the composition and/or activity of the gastrointestinal microbiota, thus conferring benefit(s) upon host health.”
Bifidobacteria and Butyrate-Producing Colon Bacteria: Importance and Strategies for Their Stimulation in the Human Gut (2016, background): “Some claims exist for the term fiber (EFSA, 2011a,b, 2015), but not all fibers are prebiotics, whereby the latter are distinguished from the former by the selectivity of their fermentation (Slavin, 2013; Hutkins et al., 2016; Verspreet et al., 2016).”
The role of short-chain fatty acids in the interplay between gut microbiota and diet in cardio-metabolic health (2021, background): “Apart from the cytokine production regulation, the luminal pH reduction by SCFA inhibits the growth of pathogenic bacteria.(153) Lastly, SCFAs, specifically butyrate, can contribute to host defense by inducing the antimicrobial protein cathelicidin IL-37(154,155) and increase the levels of T regulat”
Prebiotics: Definition, Types, Sources, Mechanisms, and Clinical Applications (2019, background): “It should be taken into account that the fiber solubility or fermentability is not crucial [20,21].”
Benefaction of probiotics for human health: A review (2018, background): “Normally, the stomach contains 10(3) different bacterial species, and the total microbial population of the colon comprises of about 10(11)e10(12) cfu/g [6].”
Factors affecting the composition of the gut microbiota, and its modulation (2019, background): “Prebiotics affect the microbiota species already present in the colon (Slavin, 2013).”
The Controversial Role of Human Gut Lachnospiraceae (2020, background): “acetate MD LD CKD IBD Inhibition of entero-pathogens; reduction of luminal pH, and increases the absorption of dietary nutrient [81,82].”