FINISHED your lunch? Now eat the wrapper. Australian scientists have discovered that the kind of 'resistant starch' now being used to make environmentally-friendly packaging can also boost health-giving bacteria in the human bowel and may one day help save human lives.
Researchers claim that resistant starch promotes in the gut the growth of the same kind of beneficial bacteria which are included in many commercial yoghurt brands.
The research was led by chief scientist David Topping, whose tongue-in-cheek prediction is that in future people could wrap sandwiches in plastic made from plant-based resistant starch and then eat the wrapper instead of throwing it away.
Scientists say resistant starch is now shaping up as a very important dietary protection against cancer and other bowel diseases, which kill thousands of people each year the world over.
Resistant starch is so named because it resists being digested in the stomach and lower intestine.Instead, it travels right through the digestive tract to arrive largely intact in the large intestine (or colon), where it has a number of signifi-cant health benefits.
Scientists did not initially understand why resistant starch was so good for the colon. Earlier research in pigs had shown it boosted the growth of beneficial bacteria that protected against cancer, diarrhoea and constipation. And the results in humans are proving equally promising.