An in vitro method, based on chewing, to predict resistant starch content in foods allows parallel determination of potentially available starch and dietary fiber.

The purpose of this work was to develop a method for measurement of the major forms of resistant starch (RS) in foods. The analytical procedure was chosen to mimic physiologic conditions, and included chewing as a prestep before incubation with pepsin, pancreatin and amyloglucosidase. The undigestible polysaccharides, including RS, were recovered by ethanol precipitation and subsequent filtration. RS was analyzed as total starch in the filter residue. The residues were also used for gravimetric determination of dietary fiber after correcting for remaining protein, ash and RS. The potentially available starch fraction was determined from analysis of glucose in the filtrate. The foods included were prepared to resemble products for which RS figures were available from in vivo measurements, and/or from analysis with other current in vitro methods. For six of these foods, and for three additional starchy materials, RS figures were compared with in vivo and/or in vitro data for identical products. The pooled standard deviation for the suggested RS method was 2.9%. A high correlation was obtained with in vivo figures from the literature for 19 realistic foods (r = 0.97; y = 0.77x + 0.45). After correction for RS, dietary fiber figures corresponded well with conventional gravimetric dietary fiber analysis for 14 starchy foods (r = 0.97). It is concluded that the procedure described here provides a convenient way to estimate RS content of realistic foods, allowing parallel determination of the potentially available starch fraction and dietary fiber.