Prediction of in-vitro glycemic responses of biscuits in an engineered small intestine system

The Glycemic Index (GI) indicates the effect of a food product on the increase/decrease in postprandial blood glucose levels. Monitoring the glycemic response is important, as it is associated with the human nutrition absorption. However, human or animal blood sampling involves financial, ethical, and other challenges. Accordingly, in the recent past, many human digestion models have been developed to understand the intricate changes that occur during human digestion and absorption processes. Dynamic models help in studying the digestion mechanics and hypotheses related to the health effects of food ingredients in controlled conditions. The objective of this study is to predict the GI of different biscuit composition using an engineered small intestine system, considering a mass transfer approach and in-silico simulation. Different GI was predicted for biscuits: 62 for plain biscuits (N) containing only refined wheat flour; 57 for finger millet flour biscuits (F); 51 for wheat bran fortified biscuits (W). The results were close to human in-vivo values; GI of 76 for plain biscuits (N); 58 for finger millet biscuits (F) and 41 for wheat bran fortified (W) biscuits, respectively (with no significant difference in the GI values of Engineered model and human glucose blood sampling results) which was confirmed with Bland-Altmann statistics. This finding will help in predicting the glycemic response of new biscuit products serving as an alternative approach to human blood sampling for GI analysis.