TNO’s Integrated Approach Allows Rapid Identification of Health-Promoting Ingredients

18/04/08 TNO Zeist has developed an integrated approach assisting manufacturers in their search for health-promoting ingredients. A very large number of fractions in food matrices can be screened in a short period of time, providing insight about the potentially health-promoting properties of these fractions.

TNO’s screening platform can also be used to determine whether modification of the production process will preserve any health-promoting components. The platform can, for example, be applied to select novel health-promoting ingredients and ingredients for clinical nutrition and baby food, but also to upgrade residual flows from the vegetable, fruit and grain processing industries.

TNO’s screening platform is composed of technologies derived from various fields, such as analytical chemistry, physiology, microbiology and molecular biology. The approach involves the food matrix being fractionated (this may or may not be preceded by an in vitro predigestion step) and the functionality of the fractions being determined in an artificial micro-gut system and then characterisation of the functional components. TNO’s micro-gut system is the only multi-channel system in the world in which the intestinal flora can be cultured as well as kept in a stable condition. The artificial microgut system allows the simultaneous measurement of the effects of hundreds of food components - or combinations of them - on the composition and activity of the intestinal flora.

Those components that prove to have beneficial effects on the composition of the gut flora are further characterised. If required, a predigestion step can be carried out prior to these assays, which gives manufacturers information on the bio-availability of the components and how this can be improved. Predigestion may, for example, be useful when studying components in crude plant extracts. It is currently possible to analyse the effects of food components on the intestinal flora; in the near future it will be possible to study such effects on skin and oral flora as well.