Gene Spiller - Böcker

The editors have designed this book to serve both as a textbook on fiber in nutrition and, we hope, as the first complete reference on the subject. For the past 25 years, the study of plant fibers and their effect on human physiology has generally been relegated to a low-priority status. Recently, however, this area of research has enjoyed a renaissance unparalleled in the history of the food and nutritional sciences, a reawakening which has occurred primarily as a result of epidemiology reports that suggested a positive relationship between plant fiber ingestion and health. As interest among the scientific community increased and new research programs were initiated to test objectively the epidemiological hypotheses, major gaps in the fundamental pool of knowledge became apparent. To compound the difficulty, scientists often did not agree upon what "fiber" is. Some investigators restricted their definition to the structural polymers of the plant, while others expanded theirs to include the entire plant cell wall with all its fibrous and associated nonfibrous substances. As a result, research that was performed and reported frequently only obscured the issue still further; at best it exposed whole new areas of ignorance in a field once considered too uninteresting to pursue. Despite voluminous research, scientists generally have still not been able to identify with certainty the specific component(s) of the plant cell-wall system that causes the various observed physiological effects. In fact, they do not yet agree upon the nomenclatures involved.

The study of plant fibers and their effect on human physiology has suddenly, after many years of comparative obscurity, been catapulted to the forefront of the scien­ tific world. This new interest, first ignited by certain epidemiological reports, has been intensified by new re­ search and by dramatization in the lay press. To counter­ act the dissemination of inaccurate information and to elimi­ nate confusion, several authors have felt the need to make objective, unbiased reports available to the scientific community. The collection of papers in our own Fiber in Human Nutrition (Plenum Press, 1976) is one such effor~ However, even as it was going to press, we realized that increased interest in specific areas of fiber research necessitated a more detailed and up-to-date look at certain topics. This book is directed to that purpose. The first volume of Fiber in Human Nutrition was de­ signed as a basic reference textbook covering the entire spectrum of plant fibers from chemical, analytical, physico­ chemical, physiological, medical and epidemiological points of view. The present volume, which enlarges on specific aspects of dietary fiber, is offered as a supplement to Fiber in Human Nutrition. Together, the two volumes should be a most valuable source of information for the student of the scientific intricacies of fiber. An ongoing concern is that many of the substances dealt with in these and other "fiber" books are not, in the clas­ sical sense, of a fibrous nature at all.