Agave Plant May Fight Osteoporosis and More
Lee Swanson Research Update
"Fructans are considered functional food ingredients because they affect body processes in ways that result in better health and reduction in the risk of many diseases," said Mercedes Lopez, Ph.D., from the National Polytechnic Institute, Guanajuato, Mexico, who delivered the report. "Experimental studies suggest that fructans may be beneficial in diabetes, obesity, stimulating the immune system of the body, decreasing levels of disease-causing bacteria in the intestine and relieving constipation."
Fructans are non-digestible carbohydrates. They consist of molecules of fructose—the sugar found in honey, grapes and ripe fruits—linked together into chains. Scientific studies have suggested that fructans stimulate the growth of healthful bacteria in the large intestine in a way that increases the body’s absorption of minerals, including the calcium and magnesium important for bone growth.
In the new study, Lopez and colleagues set out to determine what effects agave fructans actually have on bone growth. They tested the effects of agave fructans on laboratory mice. Mice fed agave fructans absorbed more calcium from food, excreted less calcium in their feces, and showed a 50% increase in levels of a protein associated with the build-up of new bone tissue.
"These results suggest that the supplementation of the standard diet with agave fructans prevented bone loss and improved bone formation, indicating the important role of agave fructans on the maintenance of healthy bone," Lopez said. "They can be used in many products for children and infants to help prevent various diseases, and can even be used in ice cream as a sugar substitute."
In addition, the scientists cited hints from past research that agave fructans may have greater health benefits. Agave fructans, for instance, seem to stimulate production of greater amounts of incretins than the inulin-type fructans from chicory. Incretins are a group of gastrointestinal hormones that increase the amount of insulin released by the pancreas. That could be beneficial for individuals with diabetes or high blood sugar levels who are at risk of diabetes, Lopez said. One incretin stimulated by agave fructans is a good satiety enhancer, which would make people feel full on less food.
"We still have a long way to go to determine for which health benefits agave fructans perform better than chicory fructans," Lopez said. "However, the early results are encouraging, and we are working on it."
American Chemical Society
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Sept. 2010