Introduction to Wheat Dietary Fiber

Wheat Dietary Fiber

Wheat bran contains various active substances, including 50% dietary fiber, which mainly consists of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. In 1980, the International Association for Cereal Chemistry (ICC) stated at a conference that "among the dietary fibers that are generally available, wheat bran is the most concentrated, effective, and suitable for the human body". Wheat dietary fiber has a long history of use in the West, is safe, and is recognized as a natural food fiber.

Dietary fiber can be roughly divided into soluble dietary fiber and insoluble dietary fiber based on its solubility in hot water. The ratio of insoluble to soluble dietary fiber in wheat is about 9:1, and through a patented technology, this ratio can be increased to 8:2.

Insoluble dietary fiber refers to the part of dietary fiber that is not digested by digestive enzymes in the human body and is insoluble in hot water. It mainly consists of components of cell walls, including cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, chitin, and plant waxes.

History of Dietary Fiber

In 1953, "dietary fiber" was first proposed as a term to replace "crude fiber" to describe the indigestible residue in food. After more than half a century of research, the definition of dietary fiber has been continuously improved and developed.

In 1995, the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (Asp) proposed the following definition of dietary fiber for nutrition labels: "analytically determined carbohydrate polymers that are resistant to digestion by human enzymes in the small intestine and have one or more physiological effects characteristic of dietary fiber and are analyzable by simple, reasonable methods in unknown foods".

Since 1997, some researchers have defined dietary fiber as the indigestible part of food, including oligosaccharides, resistant starch, resistant protein, and combined compounds.

In 2001, the American Association of Cereal Chemists (AACC) officially defined dietary fiber as "those edible parts of plants or similar carbohydrates that are resistant to digestion and absorption in the human small intestine but are partially or completely fermented in the large intestine. Dietary fiber includes polysaccharides, oligosaccharides, lignin and associated plant substances. Dietary fiber promotes regularity, lowers cholesterol levels, and lowers blood sugar levels."

In 2004, the Codex Alimentarius Commission defined dietary fiber as "carbohydrate polymers with a degree of polymerization of three (or more) that are not digestible and absorbable in the small intestine, and have at least one of the following two characteristics: naturally present in food and edible carbohydrate polymers, or carbohydrate polymers obtained from food raw materials by physical, enzymatic, or chemical means."

Due to imbalanced diet and excess nutrition, "diseases of affluence" have become widespread in many countries, and obesity, hypertension, coronary heart disease, diabetes, mastitis, and colon cancer have become major health hazards for people.