Effects of cereal soluble dietary fibres on hydrolysis of p-nitrophenyl laurate by pancreatin.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of cereal soluble dietary fibres (SDFs), β-glucans (BG) from oat and barley as well as arabinoxylans (AX) from wheat and rye, on the lipolysis of p-nitrophenyl laurate (p-NP laurate). p-NP laurate emulsions were prepared in the presence of increasing concentrations of SDFs (0.1%, 1.0% and 1.5% w/v), and lipolysis of emulsions by pancreatic lipase, particle size distribution of the p-NP laurate droplets, and viscosity of emulsions with soluble dietary fibres were measured. It was found that with increasing viscosity of SDFs, the rate of lipolysis decreased while the initial droplet size of the emulsion increased. Rate coefficients were more consistently correlated with average droplet size than with viscosity, suggesting that SDFs inhibited lipolysis primarily by increasing the size of droplets through flocculation, thereby decreasing the available surface area for lipase action.