An Engineering Perspective on Human Digestion

Physical chemistry of gastric digestion of proteins gels

“…A better approach is taken in engineering perspectives of digestions. Here, the digestive tract is envisioned as a collection of reactor vessels of finite volume, connected in series, each performing a set of unit operations ( M Bornhorst et al., 2016 , Lamond et al., 2019 ). The stomach performs the following unit operations: mechanical breakdown, mixing, pH regulation, enzymatic hydrolysis, and sieving (via the pyloric valve).…”

“…Its activity is said to be inhibited by intermediate peptides ( Qi et al., 2018 ). Salivary amylase and gastric lipase can be active in the stomach ( Sarkar et al., 2015 , Lamond et al., 2019 ), but their action is irrelevant for meals of protein gels, and hence we disregard further discussion of that.…”

Mathematical modelling of food hydrolysis during in vitro digestion: From single nutrient to complex foods in static and dynamic conditions

“…In silico models describing the process flows of these dynamic digestion experiments can serve as a useful means to better understand and quantify the system dynamics, and hence be of real added value to interpret experimental data. These models can be built based on an engineering approach (Bornhorst et al, 2016;Lamond et al, 2019), where mass balance principles are applied over each reaction vessel (i.e. digestive compartment) for each compound of interest:…”

In silico trials of food digestion and absorption: how far are we?

“…A number of research groups continue to use and adapt models developed in the fields of engineering and biophysics to predict the behaviour of food in gastric conditions [7 ]. Recent examples include modelling work on mass transfer and absorption in the intestine [38], or on the physical-chemistry of gastric digestion of solid foods to predict: their swelling [39], their softening [40], their breakdown into particles [41], their acid and moisture uptake and buffering capacity [42][43][44].…”

“…one or several gastric and intestinal sub-compartments, peripheral blood, etc.) and into a series of unit operations to model the physicochemical processes that take place [7 ]. In the pharmaceutical area, this strategy has led to a number of physiologically based kinetic (PBK) models to predict the absorption of orally administered pharmaceuticals [5], or for safety assessment of chemicals: cosmetics, food additives, pesticides, and so on [8].…”