Dietary fibre in Hungarian foods measured by the Englyst NSP procedure andthe AOAC Prosky procedure: a comparison study

Seventeen individual Hungarian foods and ten duplicate meals were analysed for dietary fibre by two current methods; the Englyst procedure tan enzymic -chemical method) for measuring dietary fibre as plant cell-wall non-starch polysaccharides (NSP) and the Prosky procedure tan enzymic-gravimetric met hod). The results obtained by these two methods are compared. The values ob tained by the Prosky method are higher than those obtained by the Englyst m ethod for 16 of the 17 individual foods and for all of the meal samples. Na tional dietary guidelines recommend an increased intake of dietary fibre in the form of fruits, vegetables and whole grains. NSP values for unfortifie d plant foods provide a reliable marker for the cell-wall material present in the recommended, largely unrefined, plant foods. The Prosky values can r epresent the measurement of a range of materials formed during food process ing and thus do not serve as a reliable guide to the composition of food pr oducts or the recommended, naturally occurring high-fibre diet. (C) 1999 El sevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.