Englyst Procedure for Determination of Total, Soluble and Insoluble Dietary Fibre as Non-starch Polysaccharides: Measurement of Constituent Sugars by Gas-Liquid Chromatography and Colorimetry

Scope and Field of Application The Englyst procedure determines total, soluble and insoluble non starch polysaccharides Q.{SP) in plant foods and food products. The procedure is widely used in research, ard it is one of the methods used for food labelling for dietary fibre within the EC. The cell-wall material naturally present in plants is the common characteristic of the foods that comprise a high-fibre diet and approximately 90% of this material is NSP. The specific measurement of the NSP content of unfortified plant foods provides a good marker for endogenous plant cell-wail material and, therefore, for a high-fibre diet (i.e. a diet rich in plant cell-wail material, starch, minerals, vitamins and antioxidants but low in fat and sodium). The EC Scientific Committee for Food have been considering the definition of dietary fibre for food labelling and have reported: “There was lengthy discussion as to the material that should be defined as fibre for the purposes of nutrition labelling.