Preface

Food product development is often a tedious process, involving many stages and parameters that have to be considered. The need for novel food products always exists and industries are striving to develop products that balance nutrition, consumer acceptability, and costs. During new food product development, technologists and others often focus on the food structuring component. Indeed, this is vital because this decides the market for and life of the product. However, when consumed, foods remain in the oral cavity for only a few seconds to minutes and then spend the rest of their processing period along various sections of the gastrointestinal tract (GIT). Importantly, just like processing conditions and their impact on foods, the environment of the human digestive system has significant implications for the fate of foods and the nutrients present in them. Therefore, what is equally vital is a focus on food destructuring and the understanding of what happens to a food once we have consumed it. A strong understanding of this aspect will certainly be of benefit to food technologists, nutritionists, and health professionals.

Given this, the book Food Digestion and Absorption: Its Role in Food Product Development begins with information on the human digestive system, starting with the oral cavity, followed by the stomach and small and large intestines. Each of the relevant chapters can help the reader to visualize the environment and changes that food undergoes along the GIT. Supporting researchers in understanding these aspects better, various in vitro, in vivo, and in silico approaches have been explored, simulating the food digestion and absorption processes; these are presented in the first chapter. Subsequent chapters deal with food structures, the impact of food processing, and destructuring processes. These are supported with content on designing foods with new food ingredients and a specific case of how encapsulation serves as a structuring approach. The last chapter deals with aspects of and considerations in developing novel personalized foods. In addition, the book covers interesting content on gut–brain–microbiota interactions, nutrient absorption mechanisms, and state-of-the-art research in this field, on a global scale.

We strongly believe that this book will serve as an excellent resource for multidisciplinary professionals focusing mainly on food product development. With changing trends in consumer behavior and food intake patterns, this resource provides a detailed picture of the need for focusing equally on food destructuring processes and the fate of food in the human digestive system.

C. Anandharamakrishnan, Jeyan Arthur Moses, and Priyanka Sethupathy