Type 1 Resistant Starch: A journey through the gut

Most adults in the UK are overweight or obese, and healthier processed foods are urgently needed. One solution is to replace 'available starch' in the diet with 'resistant starch' that is not readily digested to glucose in the upper-gut, and therefore enters the colon. Edible plant-tissues from pulses are a natural source of Type 1 Resistant starch (RS1), but the dietary intake of RS1 has never been systematically documented. Furthermore, the resilience of these structures to food processing and digestion are not well understood - How do these structures escape digestion in the upper gut? What is the nature of the digested food material that enters the colon? Are the resident microbiota capable of disassembling these resistant starch structures?
In this project isolated plant cells will be used to study the digestive fate of RS1 and its impact on the microbiome that resides in the human gut.