Not everyone finds it that exciting to have to crunch carrots and crispbread in order to consume sufficient dietary fibre. Dietary fibre has a beneficial effect on intestinal diseases – but can you really skip the fibre-eating bit and still achieve the good effect that fibre has on the gut?

This should indeed be possible, according to scientists from Aarhus University. In a new project they will be developing a nutraceutical or dietary ingredient that can make it easier to achieve a high level of butyric acid in the large intestine, without having to eat loads of ryebread and vegetables.

The supplements that scientists are working on are based on modified starch. The idea is that eating the starch-based supplements can prevent problems in the colon such as cancer and inflammation.

Mimics the effects of dietary fibre

The good thing about fibre is that it increases the production of butyric acid in the gut significantly. Butyric acid is a short-chain fatty acid that is produced when micro-organisms convert dietary fibres in the large intestine. Butyric acid is the preferred energy source for intestinal cells and is important for cell division and development. It also has a preventive effect on inflammation and cancer of the colon and is thus crucial for maintaining colonic health.

If you do not get sufficient fibre in your diet, you will not get sufficient butyric acid into your colon.

- The typical Danish diet is high in red meat, fat and readily digestible carbohydrates such as sugar and white flour. This type of diet has a low fibre content. This will limit the production of butyric acid and in this way increase the risk of inflammation and colon cancer, says postdoc Tina Skau Nielsen from the Department of Animal Science at Aarhus University.

A high intake of dietary fibre is not always that easy to practise since dietary fibre may have a negative effect on the taste of foods plus it can take a long time to chew through foods that are naturally rich in fibre. Therefore, we need to find other ways to deliver butyric acid to the colon. It is here that the starch enters the picture.

Tina Skau Nielsen uses enzymes to modify starch from, for example, maize, potatoes and wheat, so that it acts more like fibres. The molecule becomes more branched, which means that instead of being rapidly degraded in the small intestine it will travel all the way down to the colon where the microorganisms can then access the modified molecule and convert it to butyric acid. The scientists will also link butyric acid directly to the starch. This will give a product that will deliver butyric acid directly to the colon much more efficiently than hitherto.

Rats first, then humans

Initially, the product will be tested on rats in the laboratory. Some of the rats will be fed a diet with lots of fat and protein to imitate our own unhealthy and fibre-poor diet. The rats are also fed the modified starch product to see if it can counteract the negative effects on the colon of the unhealthy diet.

When the scientists have examined whether there is a positive effect on rats, the next step will be to develop a useful product that can be consumed by humans as a dietary supplement, by special groups of patients, for example, or be used as ingredients in other foods – but it will take at least five years before the research reaches that stage.

Read more about the project here.

The 2.5-year project has a total budget of 3.3 million DKK, which has been granted by The Danish Council for Independent Research | Technology and Production. The other project partners are CSIRO Food and Nutritional Sciences in Australia, University of Copenhagen and the food ingredients supplier KMC.

For more information please contact: Postdoc Tina Skau Nielsen, Department of Animal Science, email: TinaS.Nielsen@agrsci.dk, phone: 8715 7962