Extraction of Dietary Fibre from Selected Food Plants Grown In Adamawa and Gombe States North – Eastern Nigeria

Abstract

The concept of body cleaning and healthy living has been with us for centuries.Dietary fiber (DF) is the edible parts of plants or analogous carbohydrates that are resistant to digestion and absorption in the human small intestine, with complete or partial fermentation in the large intestine. They passes relatively intact through your stomach, small intestine, colon and out of your body. In this research, commonly grown and consumed plant food samples in the north east of Nigeria, were selected under classification as fruits, leaf and seed samples. Soluble dietary fiber (SDF) and insoluble dietary fiber (IDF) were extracted using the enzymatic-gravimetric method. The result showed that the fruit, leaf and seed samples were richer in IDF than SDF. The percentage IDF yield ranged from 44.95 – 62.95 %, 63.00 – 84.05 % and 39.85 – 93.76 % for fruit, leaf and seed samples respectively. The percentage SDF yield for the fruit, leaf and plant samples ranged from 9.12 – 17.85 %, 3.73 – 25.86 % and 21.07 and fruit samples. The result also revealed that the seed samples were better source of SDF than the leaf and fruit samples. Thus,the selected fruit samples were found to be the poorest source IDF and SDF when compared to the selected leaf and seed samples. KEYWORDS: Soluble Dietary Fiber; Insoluble Dietary Fiber; Enzymatic-Gravimetric Method; Fruits; Seeds; Leaf