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In nutrition science, it is well recognised that the nutritional properties of a meal depend not only on the individual foods consumed but also on how they are combined. Food combinations can influence nutrient bioavailability, digestion, and metabolism.
Starchy foods such as rice and pasta are staples of the Mediterranean diet. While these foods are an important source of energy, they can also produce a rapid rise in blood glucose because of their high content of digestible starch. They are commonly consumed with tomatoes, which are rich in bioactive compounds that have the potential to influence starch digestion and glycaemic response. This raises an interesting question: could the bioactive compounds naturally present in tomatoes help reduce the glycaemic impact of these staple foods?
The BIG project (Bioactive Compounds Impact on Glycaemia) was established to investigate this question.
In 2023, Dr Marina Corrado joined our group through a Marie Sk艂odowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship to explore the potential of tomato phenolic compounds to modulate starch digestibility. Building on previous evidence showing that phenolic compounds interact with starch polymers (Corrado et al., 2025), she first identified promising tomato bioactive compounds and then designed an in vitro kinetic study to determine the concentrations required to reduce starch digestibility.
The results of this work have been published: https://doi.org/10.1039/d5fo05373k
The findings showed that the effects on starch digestibility depended not only on the concentration of phenolic compounds but also on their specific phenolic profile. This raised a new question: what happens to these compounds during digestion?
To answer this question, Marina established the INFOGEST static in vitro digestion model in our laboratory at the Torribera Food Campus. This model allows us to investigate how tomato phenolic compounds are transformed during the oral, gastric, and intestinal phases of digestion, and which compounds remain available to interact with starch. Understanding these transformations is essential because the compounds reaching the small intestine may differ substantially from those originally present in the food matrix. The results of this study will be available soon.
Together, these studies bridge the gap between the composition of bioactive compounds in foods and the compounds that are actually released and transformed during digestion. In doing so, the project has established the experimental framework needed to investigate the digestive fate of bioactive compounds in foods beyond tomatoes.
The BIG project has been presented at ICDF 2024, FBHC 2025, IUNS 2025, and ICDF 2026.
Acknowledgements
This project received funding from the European Union through a Marie Sk艂odowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship under Grant Agreement No. 101105493.