Food protein digestion by in vitro static approaches

In vitro digestion models represent very promising approaches to mimic the physiological digestion processes as predictive of in vivo behaviors or directly alternatives to in vivo experiments. The static approaches are able to reproduce the physiological conditions (pH values and salts, digestive time, and enzyme concentration), monitoring food components digestibility, bioaccessibility, and bioavailability; the only limit is the lack of mechanical aspects of passive diffusion, and consequently the simulation of pH and buffer changes over time. Despite this, the great advantages of rapidity and low costs make static models widely diffused to monitor digestion of different food matrices and compounds. In this chapter, we focused our attention on the application of in vitro static approaches in the study of food protein digestion with an in-depth analysis of the international consensus static digestion protocol (COST action INFOGEST) and its evolution over the years. © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.