While in vivo methods have been used to determine the glycemic response of food, they are time consuming, costly, and not suitable for large-scale applications. As an alternative, in vitro digestion models offer fast, reproducible results to study food digestion kinetics that are less expensive than conducting human trials. While there are several in vitro glycemic index (GI) methods used to determine the GI of food, most do not employ methods of in vivo testing. Therefore, we used a static in vitro digestive system, the Dedicated Ryerson University In-vitro Digester (DRUID), that simulates both gastric and intestinal conditions to determine the glycemic response of commonly consumed carbohydrate-containing foods. Samples were collected at regular intervals over a 2h residence time after digestion in the intestinal phase of the DRUID. The DRUID-determined GI values were compared to published in vivo GI values. A Bland-Altman plot showed that there was agreement between the GI values determined from the DRUID compared with published in vivo GI values. In conclusion, the in vitro DRUID can reliably and reproducibly determine the GI across a spectrum of carbohydrate-containing foods, and has the potential to predict the digestion kinetics of novel food products in vivo that may promote human health.
Surface structural features control in vitro digestion kinetics of bean starches
