Toxicological and Regulatory Aspects of Dietary Fibre

Abstract

The growth of public interest in the dietary fibre hypothesis as promoted in the lectures and writings of Burkitt and Trowell in the early 1970s led to a public demand for high-fibre foods, and this encouraged food producers and retailers to produce and promote both existing and modified products claiming to be good sources of dietary fibre. Two general strategies can be adopted by consumers wishing to increase their intake of fibre. The first approach is to increase the consumption of foods containing abundant quantities of cell wall polysaccharides as original structural components. Such foods include many vegetables and fruits, and of course high-extraction cereal products of a traditional type. These foods are already familiar to most of us and it is simply their variety and relative proportions in the diet which need to be modified. This approach has often been favoured by advisory bodies such as NACNE in setting dietary recommendations for the UK population. The second strategy is to consume foods in which the dietary fibre content has been increased by the food manufacturer, using modern processing techniques to incorporate Supplements based on NSP or, perhaps, resistant starch.