Salminen S, Bouley C, Boutron-Ruault M C, Cummings J H, Franck A, Gibson G R, Isolauri E, Moreau M C, Roberfroid M, Rowland I
Department of Biochemistry and Food Chemistry, University of Turku, Finland.
Br J Nutr. 1998 Aug;80 Suppl 1:S147-71. doi: 10.1079/bjn19980108.
The gut is an obvious target for the development of functional foods, acting as it does as the interface between diet and the metabolic events which sustain life. The key processes in digestive physiology which can be regulated by modifying diet are satiety, the rate and extent of macronutrient breakdown and absorption from the small bowel, sterol metabolism, the colonic microflora, fermentation, mucosal function and bowel habit, and the gut immune system. The intestinal microflora is the main focus of many current functional foods. Probiotics are foods which contain live bacteria which are beneficial to health whilst prebiotics, such as certain non-digestible oligosaccharides which selectively stimulate the growth of bifidobacteria in the colon, are already on the market. Their claimed benefits are to alleviate lactose maldigestion, increase resistance to invasion by pathogenic species of bacteria in the gut, stimulate the immune system and possibly protect against cancer. There are very few reports of well-designed human intervention studies with prebiotics as yet. Certain probiotic species have been shown to shorten the duration of rotavirus diarrhoea in children but much more work is needed on the mechanism of immunomodulation and of competitive exclusion and microflora modification. The development of functional foods for the gut is in its infancy and will be successful only if more fundamental research is done on digestive physiology, the gut microflora, immune system and mucosal function.
肠道显然是功能性食品开发的一个目标，因为它是饮食与维持生命的代谢活动之间的界面。通过改变饮食可以调节的消化生理关键过程包括饱腹感、小肠中大量营养素分解和吸收的速率及程度、固醇代谢、结肠微生物群、发酵、黏膜功能和排便习惯以及肠道免疫系统。肠道微生物群是当前许多功能性食品的主要关注点。益生菌是含有对健康有益的活细菌的食品，而益生元，如某些能选择性刺激结肠中双歧杆菌生长的不可消化寡糖，已经投放市场。它们宣称的益处包括缓解乳糖消化不良、增强对肠道中致病细菌侵袭的抵抗力、刺激免疫系统以及可能预防癌症。目前关于益生元的精心设计的人体干预研究报告非常少。某些益生菌已被证明可缩短儿童轮状病毒腹泻的病程，但在免疫调节机制、竞争排斥和微生物群改变方面还需要做更多工作。针对肠道的功能性食品开发尚处于起步阶段，只有对消化生理、肠道微生物群、免疫系统和黏膜功能进行更多基础研究才会取得成功。
