Common food thickeners—long thought to pass through us—are actually digested

[rcjordan]

#processed

"a source of sugar for bacterial growth,"
says Dr. Harry Brumer, a professor in the Michael Smith Laboratories and Department of Chemistry

Common food thickeners—long thought to pass right through us—are actually digested
https://phys.org/news/2025-08-common-food-thickeners-thought-digested.html

[ergophobe]

Somewhat related...

>> natural polysaccharides in our diets

There was a fascinating mystery with HMOs - Human Milk Oligosaccharide. It is the fourth largest component of human breast milk, behind water, lactose and fat, but ahead of protein. And yet, human infants cannot digest it. So why would we devote so much energy to producing a non-nutritive compound instead of something like protein?

Because some bacteria, especially bifidobacteria, CAN eat it and it turns out that if you have more of those bacteria in your gut, you avoid other problems.

Healthy bifidobacteria is super important for the immune response in babies.

And here's the wild part - the healthy bacteria have all but disappeared in much of the world. In the US they are found in some communities like Mennonites, but mostly missing which may be one of the causes of the increase in IBS.

There is a fun Radiolab on the subject. And since I know RC won't listen to a podcast, this page has a transcription (albeit a very chatty transcription)
https://metacast.app/podcast/radiolab/cQYzAkrY/the-elixir-of-life/aE2Gh0YU

And so less chatty articles
https://www.nature.com/articles/d42473-018-00007-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_milk_oligosaccharide

And Science Direct has its usual flood of articles....
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/human-milk-oligosaccharide

[littleman]

Radiolab is great.