Modelling the Co-Digestion of Wine Polyphenols with Glucose, Proteins and Lipids in the Human Gastrointestinal Tract

This study investigates food matrix effects during the co-digestion of red wine with different nutrients, including glucose and whey proteins, as well as olive oil lipids and cholesterol by using the gastrointestinal dynamic simulator simgi ®. Co-digestion with red wine led to a reduction of glucose bioaccessibility and of α-lactalbumin gastric digestibility. In relation to lipids, the co-digestion with red wine tended to increase the percentage of bioaccessible monoglycerides, although significant differences were not found. Interestingly, co-digestion with red wine tended to reduce cholesterol bioaccessibility, which could be related to the decrease in bile salt content observed in the micellar phase. Furthermore, co-digestion with the food models modified wine polyphenols profiles during gastrointestinal digestion, including their bioaccessible and non-bioaccessible fractions. At colonic level, combined intake of wine and each food model affected colonic microbiota composition and functionality. In particular, wine digestion favoured intestinal health-related taxa, and the co-digestion of wine and food models favoured production of total short and medium chain fatty acids, especially butyric and pentanoic acids. Finally, cytotoxicity of the colonic-digested samples towards human colon adenocarcinoma cells was found to be significantly lower for the Wine and Wine+Lipid models than for the Lipid model and the control.