INFOGEST static in vitro simulation of gastrointestinal food digestion

Abstract

Developing a mechanistic understanding of the impact of food structure and composition on human health has increasingly involved simulating digestion in the upper gastrointestinal tract. These simulations have used a wide range of different conditions that often have very little physiological relevance, and this impedes the meaningful comparison of results. The standardized protocol presented here is based on an international consensus developed by the COST INFOGEST network. The method is designed to be used with standard laboratory equipment and requires limited experience to encourage a wide range of researchers to adopt it. It is a static digestion method that uses constant ratios of meal to digestive fluids and a constant pH for each step of digestion. This makes the method simple to use but not suitable for simulating digestion kinetics. Using this method, food samples are subjected to sequential oral, gastric and intestinal digestion while parameters such as electrolytes, enzymes, bile, dilution, pH and time of digestion are based on available physiological data. This amended and improved digestion method (INFOGEST 2.0) avoids challenges associated with the original method, such as the inclusion of the oral phase and the use of gastric lipase. The method can be used to assess the endpoints resulting from digestion of foods by analyzing the digestion products (e.g., peptides/amino acids, fatty acids, simple sugars) and evaluating the release of micronutrients from the food matrix. The whole protocol can be completed in ~7 d, including ~5 d required for the determination of enzyme activities.

Keywords

Affiliated Institutions

• Estación Experimental del Zaidín ES
• Instituto de Biologia Experimental e Tecnológica PT
• Biotec (United Kingdom) GB
• Aix-Marseille Université FR
• Food Process Engineering and Microbiology FR
• Institute of Food Science & Technology GB
• Technion – Israel Institute of Technology IL
• Agroscope CH
• Laboratoire Science & technologie du Lait & de l'œuf FR
• Bioénergétique et Ingénierie des Protéines FR
• Chalmers University of Technology SE
• National Institute of Health Dr. Ricardo Jorge PT
• Norwegian University of Life Sciences
• Universidad Autónoma de Madrid ES
• Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias de la Alimentación ES
• Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique FR
• Riddet Institute NZ
• Nofima
• Sécurité et Qualité des Produits d'Origine Végétale FR
• Quadram Institute GB
• Biopolymères Interactions Assemblages FR
• Ingénierie des Agropolymères et Technologies Emergentes FR
• Moritz Klinik DE
• Teagasc - The Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority IE
• Luxembourg Institute of Health LU

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