Fat digestibility in meat products: influence of food structure and gastrointestinal conditions

Abstract

Digestibility of macronutrients depends on the food matrix structure as well as on gastrointestinal conditions, especially in patients with exocrine pancreatic insufficiency. In this situation, an oral enzyme supplementation that promotes nutrient hydrolysis is needed. In this context, in the present study, a static in vitro digestion model was used to assess the lipid digestibility of different meat products (processed and fresh), different intestinal conditions of pH (6 or 7), bile concentration (1 or 10 mM) and doses of the enzyme supplement (1000–4000 lipase units/g fat). Results showed that processed (unstructured) meats had better matrix degradation during digestion and reached higher values of lipolysis extents (total free fatty acids/g fat) than the natural meat matrices with a statistically significant association (p < .001). Regarding the intestinal medium, pH of 7 and bile concentration of 10 mM contribute to higher matrix degradation and thus, to a higher lipolysis (p < .001).

Keywords:

• In vitro digestion
• lipolysis
• nutrition
• pancreatic insufficiency
• food matrix

Acknowledgements

The authors also thank the Conselleria de Educació i Investigació de la Generalitat Valenciana for the PhD scholarship given to Andrea Asensio Grau. Finally, we thank Antonio Martínez Cañada, from the Data Science and Biostatistics Unit of Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria La Fe, and Arash Javanidejad for the English corrections.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Authors of this article acknowledge the European Union and the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Framework Programme (PHC-26-2014 call Self-management of health and disease: citizen engagement and mHealth) for fully funding this research in the context of MyCyFAPP Project, under grant agreement number 643806.