Quantifying digestion products: Physicochemical aspects

Engineering the digestibility of foods mandates control over the complex compositions and structures that form, disintegrate, and are taken up in the human alimentary canal. Such rational design of oral intake can be attained through careful efforts to understand the underlying determinants of bioaccessibility and bioavailability. Thus, adequate quantification of the physicochemical aspects of digesta is of high importance. This chapter focuses on the practical aspects of analyzing digesta and the multifaceted scientific and technological challenges involved. Readers are provided with an overview of the physicochemical parameters that are commonly determined in digesta, the rational for method selection and the current literature detailing biochemical, chemical, and physical analyses of digesta. Hopefully, this will encourage more research professionals to adapt a holistic foodomics approach and coupling it with advanced analytics and computerization tools (e.g., big-data handling) in order to understand the digestive fate of foods. This will greatly stimulate and facilitate interdisciplinary endeavors that will help shape the future of food science and food manufacturing.