The stomach is a major digestive organ of the human body that plays a role in storing, mixing, reducing chylous particles and breaking down ingested foods. This study established a new artificial gastric digestive system (AGDS) with a human stomach shape and structure by a 3D digital technology. Two sets of symmetrical rollers and one set of contrary movement of the roller were used to simulate the peristalsis of the stomach, and a pH-stat workstation was applied to control the pH. The force, pepsin and gastric juice secretion, gastric emptying and pH changes of AGDS were tacked and validated. Besides, the digestion behavior of α-lactalbumin using AGDS model, static model and semi-dynamic model (pH and enzyme changes) were studied. The results showed that the hydrolysis and morphology of protein, peptide and amino acids accumulation obtained by AGDS were different from the static digestion and semi-dynamic digestion models, indicating pH and gastric motility had certain effect on protein hydrolysis, particularly in the pepsin activity changes at early stage of digestion. AGDS, verified by mechanical analysis and in vitro digestion experiments, indicated that it can provide α-LA protein solution with a true and reliable digestion profile in the stomach, and can be used as a potential dynamic gastric digestion model for the food development.
Keywords: Artificial gastric digestive system (AGDS); Lag period; Semi-dynamic model; Static digestion model; Stomach structure.
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