A definition for dietary fiber was adopted in June 2009 by the Codex Alimentarius Commission based on the recommendation for endorsement of the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) in November 2008. The definition listed three categories of carbohydrate polymers that are not hydrolyzed by the endogenous enzymes in the small intestine of humans. However, the definition left the inclusion of carbohydrates with degrees of polymerization (DP) in the range of 3 and 9 to the discretion of national authorities and left the 'physiological effect(s) of benefit to health' as undefined. The ILSI Europe and ILSI North America's committees on dietary carbohydrates organized a forum at the Ninth Vahouny Fiber Symposium in 2010 to discuss these implementation issues with the objective of building scientific consensus on how to resolve them. The results of this session are encouraging and indicated that the scientific community agrees on maintaining a worldwide consensus regarding the inclusion of non-digestible carbohydrates with ]DP3 as dietary fiber and on a core, non-exhaustive list of beneficial physiological effects that dietary fibers have. These results are consistent with previous worldwide agreements.

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Polydextrose is a randomly bonded polysaccharide produced by the bulk melt polycondensation of glucose and sorbitol in vacuo. It has been used as a bulking and texturizing agent and soluble fiber ingredient in many food products worldwide for over two decades. Because of its atypical linkages between glucose moieties, polydextrose resists digestion by mammalian gastrointestinal enzymes. It is minimally absorbed in the small intestine and partially fermented in the large intestine producing volatile fatty acids, with approximately 50% of the ingested dose being excreted undigested. In this it is similar to many other poorly digested soluble fiber ingredients. Numerous energy balance and isotope-label disposition studies have been conducted in animals and man to investigate the caloric availability of polydextrose. The weight of available experimental evidence in the 14 studies described herein shows that polydextrose has a caloric value of approximately 1 kcal/g.