Research & Innovation

Teagasc researchers have been involved in a large-scale EU-funded network to improve and standardise the scientific protocol for simulating food digestion. The protocol is a result of a long-term collaboration between more than 27 academic institutes from 18 different countries.

A paper detailing the protocol has just been published in the prestigious journal Nature Protocols. The paper ‘INFOGEST static in vitro simulation of gastrointestinal food digestion’, was coordinated by Teagasc scientist Dr André Brodkorb, a Principal Research Officer in Teagasc Moorepark Food Research Centre.

The paper describes a standardised step-by-step in vitro protocol for the study of gastrointestinal digestion of food. It is based on an international consensus developed by an EU-funded COST Action FA1005 INFOGEST (2011-2015). The method is now the academic and industry standard to simulate the digestion of food using standard laboratory equipment. It has been validated in several in vivo trials and is a particularly good approximation of the gastrointestinal digestion of dairy products.

“The method is designed to be used with standard laboratory equipment and requires limited experience to encourage a wide range of researchers to adopt it. It is a static digestion method that uses constant ratios of meal to digestive fluids and a constant pH for each step of digestion,” says Dr André Brodkorb. The publication is one of the very few Food Science papers ever to appear in Nature Protocols. This in itself is a sign of the importance of the work in this field.

The publication consists of the paper itself, a supplementary information section describing all digestive enzyme assays, spreadsheets, videos and links to online tools and a YouTube channel managed by Dr Brodkorb.

The full-text paper can be accessed at: https://rdcu.be/brEMd