Anti nutritional factors in cereals, especially amylase trypsin inhibitors, affecting digestibility.
“Anti nutritional factors (ANF) play an important role in cereals to protect against infestation and animal consumption. From an agronomic point of view these pest barriers are beneficial as the required pest control measures (chemical pesticides, storage facilities) is relatively limited.
From a health point of view a large group of ANF, the ATI are of special interest as they may impact digestion in multiple ways, e.g. they:
• can reduce digestibility of food directly by inhibition of enzymes from the digestive tract (human and microbiome; Weegels 1994),
• can increase the load of allergenic peptide presented to the small intestine, thus increasing the allergenic and inflammation reactions (Junker et al. 2012; Zevallos et al 2014)
• complexation behavior may strongly interact with the small intestine epithelium that can cause inflammation by itself (Zevallos et al 2014)
• are the not yet completely understood cause of Bakers asthma (asma), the major labour related allergy (Stobnicka and Górny, 2015)
• can increase the load of non digested peptides and carbohydrates especially of non-starch polysaccharides (FODMAPS) that are a major cause of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) which affects 7% to 21% of the general population (Chey et al 2015)
• may impact the microbiome itself. This is not established in detail
From a food processing point of view ATI’s play a negative role as they inhibit enzymes that are added as processing aids for improved processing and bread quality. This reduces processing effectiveness and quality control of cereal based products. Understanding the role of ATI in cereals food processing and food digestion and mitigation of the negative effects is therefor of prime importance for food safety, security (1) and sustainability. An interesting way to mitigate the effect of ATI could be by altering its molecular structure that is stabilised by the large number of disulphide bonds (5-6 on ca. 14 kDa; Buchanan et al 1997)”. “https://www.wur.nl/en/Research-Results/Chair-groups/Agrotechnology-and-Food-Sciences/Laboratory-of-Food-Chemistry/Research/Themes/Technology-of-cereal-foods-digestibility.htm”
Note
(1). “food security” e la “food safety” possono essere considerate come le facce della stessa medaglia, due termini complementari che indicano, rispettivamente, la sicurezza economico-sociale di disporre di cibo a sufficienza per vivere (“food security”) e l’esigenza igienico-sanitaria di consumare cibo sano e acqua potabile (“food safety”).