Inulin content of fortified food products in Thailand

• This is the first report on inulin content in commercial inulin fortified food products.
• Popular inulin fortified foods are milk powder, drinking yoghurt, cream yoghurt and weight control diet powder.
• Studied food products provide a good to excellent source of total dietary fibre.

This study examined inulin content in 266 samples. They were 126 dried, 105 liquid and 27 semi-solid of twelve commercial inulin fortified food products and 8 samples of natural dried sunchoke. For dried food products, inulin content ranged from 3.0 ± 0.8 g/100 g fresh weight (FW) in milk powder to 83.7 ± 17.8 g/100 g FW in inulin powder. The levels in a descending order are the powder of inulin, weight control diet, coffee mixed, instant beverage, supplemented food products for pregnant and milk. For liquid fortified foods, inulin at the level of 0.3 ± 0.1 g/100 mL FW was found in UHT milk, and up to 13.5 ± 4.1 g/100 mL FW in weight control diet beverage. The level of 2.0–2.3 g/100 g FW of inulin was found in beverage with different flavours, soybean milk and fruit juice. For semi-solid food, cream yoghurt, inulin at 3.9 ± 1.1 g/100 g FW was found. A serving of most products contributes inulin at 11–33% of the recommended daily intake of dietary fibre.