Impact of physical modifications on starch nutritional fractions: Rapidly Digestible Starch, Slowly Digestible Starch and Resistant Starch

Abstract

The industrial utilization of native starches is limited because of their poor qualities and different starch modifications are used to improve functionality of starch. Physical modification of starch is preferred since it is simple, inexpensive, and specially it does not involve any chemical reagents. Physical modifications can be divided into thermal and non-thermal treatments. These techniques alter physicochemical properties of starch including in vitro digestibility, which indicates the nutritional value of starch. Starch nutritional fractions are of three types; RDS (rapidly digestible starch), SDS (slowly digestible starch) and RS (resistant starch).  It is important to understand how physical modifications affect starch nutritional fractions as both SDS and RS have beneficial health effects and specially RS has the potential to be used as a natural bioactive compound. This review aims to summarize the recent knowledge regarding the physical modifications and their impact on in vitro digestibility and nutritional fractions of starch.