The beneficial effects of natural dietary fibre, bran constituents of cereals and pectin-containing structural carbohydrates of vegetables and fruits are well known. Dietary fibre is a loosely defined group of substances found in most foodstuffs from plant origin including cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, and pectic substances. Dietary fibre provide little food energy and is traditionally regarded as undigestible matter. It should be emphasized that crude fibre and dietary fibre are not synonymous; crude fibre is a chemically partially purified cellulose, while dietary fibre contains crude fibre cellulose plus all of the insoluble polymers mentioned above. Lignin is composed of repeating units of phenylpropane always closely associated to cellulose and is the only noncarbohydrate polymer in dietary fibre. Most fruits, including citrus, are low in cellulose and lignin and high in hemicelluloses and pectic substances, There are no digestive enzymes in the human digestive tract that can hydrolyze these polymers to simple sugars, so they arrive in the stomach unchanged and there hydrochloric acid breaks up plant cellular structures by breaking salt linkages and hydrogen bonds without affecting carbohydrate polymers structures. Intestinal bacteria in the colon produce enzymes that can partially hydrolyze (and utilize)amorphous cellulose, hemicelluloses and pectic substances. By-products include volatile fatty acids carbon dioxide, methane and degraded polysaccharide residues. The presence of these products of microbial metabolism plus residual unaltered dietary fibres affects transit time of meals through the gastrointestinal tract.
In addition to its ability to lower transit time trought the gastrointestinal tract, some components of dietary fibre can bind with and aid to eliminate bile metabolites excreted into the gut, have hypocolesterol effect and aid fecal elimination.
CITRECH has know-how to supply to interested citrus processors a new technology for producing high quality citrus dietary fibre.
As usual in CITRECH philosophy, technology easily inserts in normal juice processing lines giving the following advantages :
production of high quality dietary fibre transforming in high added value product what previously was just a difficult waste.
recovery, as by-product, of further soluble solids.
In other words, Citrech has developed a continuous innovative processing line, already industrially tested, that produce wet fibre and soluble solids. The fibres is dried and grinded up to "orange powder" that has been analyzed and classified as dietary fibre suitable for human consumption. Its origin is fruit endocarp, it has a good, non bitter taste.
Soluble solids recovered can be added back to normal juice stream and their quantity is as high to account for an extra yield of 2-3 % on starting fruit.
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