Abstract
Dietary interventions to combat non-communicable diseases focus on optimising food intake but overlook the influence of food structure. Food processing often causes the loss of foodstructure, but how this influences human gastrointestinal digestion and the signals it generates, such as gut hormones that affect homeostatic mechanisms is unclear. In this randomised cross-over study, 10 healthy participantsconsumed iso-nutrient chickpea meals with contrasting cellular structures and underwent gastric, duodenal, and blood sampling. Here, we reported that the ‘Broken’ and ‘Intact’ cell structures of meals resulted in different digestive and metabolomic profiles, leading to distinct postprandial glycaemia, gut hormones, and satiety responses. ‘Broken' meal resulted in high starch digestibility and a sharp rise in gastric maltose within 30 minutes, which acutely elicited higher blood glycaemia, GIP, and GLP-1. ‘Intact’ meal produced a prolonged release of appetite-suppressing hormones GLP-1 and PYY, elevated duodenal amino acids, and undigested starch at 120 minutes. This work highlights how plant food structure alters upper gastrointestinal-nutrient-sensing hormones, providing insights into the adverse effects of modern diets on obesity and type 2 diabetes.