2016 Volume 27 Issue 2 Pages 93-100
Fate of so-called functional food components varies from those that are readily absorbed into the human body to exert their health maintaining or promoting property to those that become functional, non-functional or even hazardous after being exposed to gastric acid, digestive enzymes, bile acids, or intestinal microbiota of the host. Practical functionality and safety of a given food component should be therefore evaluated based on its pharmacokinetics within the host alimentary tract. However, the conventional tissue culture or laboratory animal based tests are usually, if not always, difficult to yield such a comprehensive result, while conventional human intervention trails would be again difficult to perform due to the heavier economic load as well as higher ethical clearance. In order to bypass the dilemma, we have recently developed what we call “Kobe University Human Intestinal Models”, by which we are currently evaluating practical functionality and safety of both conventional and novel food components before being evaluated in genuine human intervention trails, which are described in this review paper.
