Dietary fibre fractions in cereal and cereal-containing products in Britain

The values for dietary fibre in the current UK food tables were obtained using a fractionation method which involved digestion of starch with a takadiastase preparation. For the revision of the food tables new values for the dietary fibre in cereal and cereal-containing meat products were obtained by an improved fractionation method which used a mixture of amyloglucosidase and α-amylase to digest starch. The full details of this analytical method are given, along with the fibre components which were found in 138 cereal-containing foods. This method produced higher values than the previous method in most processed cereal products. Also the levels of pentoses in the non-cellulosic polysaccharide fraction and of lignin residues are greater. The study considerably extends the range of cereal-containing foods for which the amount of dietary fibre and its components has been determined.