Development and Application of a Fibre Categories Database: Understanding the health effects of dietary fibre categories

Background: Dietary fibre has been consumed for centuries for its associated health benefits as part of the carbohydrate fraction within food. Different types of dietary fibre have different physiological properties, which is likely a reflection of the different chemical structures of fibre and relative proportions of different fractions within the fibre. That is, certain health outcomes are related to specific types of fibre. Therefore, it may be important that individuals or populations have access to more detailed guidance on dietary fibre types or categories, specific to their risk factors or health goals and in order to achieve better health outcomes. In order to examine this, it is first necessary to identify the range of health outcomes associated with consumption of different fibres, and then to quantify intakes of these fibres in a population. This would help determine health outcomes that could be observed and to design studies that could examine the relationship further. Therefore, this thesis focuses on new opportunities to study different categories of dietary fibre and examine if quantification of intakes of different fibres can be applied to data related to health outcomes. This work is necessary to determine a need for individual dietary fibre recommendations.