Biophysical and Gastro-Intestinal Engineering Aspects of Nutrient Absorption and Physiological Function

Abstract

In the design of modern processed foods, and especially in the design of foods to deliver functionality, attention must be paid to the fate of the food in the human digestive tract. This has been appositely put by (Norton et al., Annu Rev Food Sci Technol 5:177–195, 2014):

All foods pass through a common unit operation, the gastrointestinal tract, yet it is the least studied and least understood of all food processes. To design the foods of the future, we need to understand what happens inside people in the same way as understanding any other process.

The processing of food through the human digestive tract has been studied and speculated about since the time of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks. Modern studies largely originate from the historical studies of Dr. William Beaumont (Experiments and observations on the gastric juice, and the physiology of digestion. FF Allen, Plattsburgh, 1833) on a single subject with a gastric fistula caused initially by a gunshot wound. In this work, following more than 200 experiments, Beaumont makes 50 observations about gastric digestion, most of which are still valid today.

The physicochemistry and biology of human digestion of specific food components in the normal human gastrointestinal tract are well understood. Early work focused on the chemistry of what happens during digestion, and more recently attention has been placed on the processing of solid and semi-solid foods, and mechanical and microstructural aspects of the process have been more closely studied. There are, however, many aspects of digestion in which there is a need to improve our knowledge if we are to properly understand how we interact with the food we eat, to enable us to create new foods.