Dietary fiber cereal products

The implications of the role that dietary fiber may play ia the maintenance of human health should iacrease the demand for cereal products. It may weU have an influence on the milling iadustry, especially if the demand for cereal products that are less highly milled becomes a reaHty. 

The beneficial effects of dietary fiber, including both soluble and iasoluble fiber, are generally recognized. Current recommendations are for daily iatakes of 20—35 g ia a balanced diet of cereal products, fmits, vegetables, and legumes. However, the specific preventive role of dietary fiber ia certaia diseases has beea difficult to estabUsh, ia part because dietary risk factors such as high saturated fat and high proteia levels are reduced as fiber levels iacrease. 

Lignins, three-dimensional networks built of units of phenylpropane (Figure 3.5), are components of the tough or woodlike portions of plants and seeds. Bran and other cereal products are the main sources of dietary lignin. This fiber is distinguished by the fact that it is not degraded by enzymes produced by the human or by the gut microflora (Adlercreutz, 1984). 

Kellogg s Special K Blueberry Cereal (specialk.eom/ /products)— provides whole grains with dried blueberry pieces and puree in a cereal fortified with excellent percentages of daily values for dietary fiber, vitamins A, C, and D, six B vitamins, and four essential minerals other superfruits featured are strawberry, raisin, cranberry, and elderberry in cereals or nutrition bars... 

An increase in consumption of whole grain flour products is the nutritional aim in Norway. The high content of dietary fiber or factors associated with it, however, present in bran and whole grain flour, may interfere with the bioavailability of iron as indicated by several authors (2,3,4). Phosphate and especially phytic acid present in unrefined cereal products have frequently been said to be potent inhibitors of iron absorption (5,6). 

Other organic fiber products which are mostly used in foods as dietary ballast additives are made from wheat, oats, tomato, apples, and citrus. Such dietary fibers are non-starch polysaccharides obtained from cell walls only, which can not be broken down by the digestive enzymes of the human organism and, therefore, constitute inert ballast materials. Color, taste, and odor relate to the fiber source. Unlike cereal brans or dietary fibers derived from, for example, sugar beets, which are often rejected by consumers because of their specific taste, wheat, oat, tomato, apple, and citrus fibers offer physiological properties that are much more readily accepted. 

Mihhalevski, A., Nisamedtinov, I., Halvin, K., Oseka, A., Palme, T. (2013). Stability of B-complex vitamins and dietary fiber during rye sourdough bread production. Journal of Cereal Science, 57, 30-38. 

S. E. Kays, F. E. Barton-II. Near-Infrared Analysis of Soluble and Insoluble Dietary Fiber Fractions of Cereal Food Products. J Agric Food Chem 50 3024-3029, 2002. 

---