ARS | Publication request: HYPOCHOLESTEROLEMIC PROPERTIES OF FOOD FIBERS AND FRACTIONS

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: December 20, 2005
Publication Date: N/A

Technical Abstract: Food fibers play a significant role in lowering elevated total cholesterol (TC) in animal and human studies. Population studies suggest that for 1% reduction in TC leads to 2-4% reduction in risk of atherosclerosis. Increased consumption of food fibers would significantly lower cardiovascular risk in the world population. Some of the food fibers and fractions with low fat and low cholesterol diets are allowed to have health claims on their product labels in the USA. Cholesterol lowering and bile acid binding properties of various food fibers and fraction in human, animal and in vitro studies will be reviewed along with some recent unpublished findings. In order to optimize the hypochesterolemic effect, wheat bran was extruded at five energy levels (31.5, 37.5, 43.5, 49.5 and 55.5% torque) in twin-screw extruder. Extruded wheat bran diets were fed to four-week old hamsters for three weeks. Liver cholesterol and liver lipid were significantly (P less than 0.05) lower with all extruded wheat bran diets compared with un-extruded wheat bran control. Wheat bran extruded with 49.5% torque appeared to have most desirable effect with 13% reduction in plasma cholesterol, 29% reduction in low density lipoprotein cholesterol and slight (1%) increase in high density lipoprotein cholesterol. Data suggest that cholesterol lowering potential of wheat bran could be enhanced by appropriate extrusion process technologies.