Digestibility of starch fractions in wholegrain rolled oats

A practical in vitro method was tested for measuring differences in rapidly digested starch (RDS measured at 20 min), slowly digested starch (SDS between 20 and 120 min) and inaccessible digestible starch (IDS as carbohydrate digested after homogenising at 120 min to release inaccessible starch and digesting for a further 40 min) in wholegrain cereal samples retaining some grain structure, using in vitro pancreatic digestion after a “gastric” pepsin–HCl pre-treatment. The persistence of digestive capacity, the influence of homogenising on digestive capacity, and the benefit of adding supplementary amyloglucosidase after 120 min digestion were tested as effects on capacity to digest a further 2.5 g portion of finely ground wholegrain added to selected 120 min digests. The results showed that sufficient digestive capacity remained to digest the IDS released by homogenising the wholegrains after 120 min prior digestion. The method measured all fractions with good precision (CV < 6%), and was shown to be capable of measuring a wide degree of variation in starch fractions of differing digestibility in rolled oats from an oat breeding population, so may be useful in detecting the effects of variations in grain structure that influence the glycemic impact of wholegrain products.