Resumo

The search for food ingredients that present functional health-promoting properties in addition to their regular nutritional values is continually increasing. In this context, the use of prebiotic food ingredients has been highly emphasized lately. Prebiotics are naturally occurring carbohydrates present in a wide number of plants. These components resist gastric acidity, are not hydrolyzed by intestinal enzymes, and are not absorbed by the human GI tract. For this reason, prebiotics can reach the colon and be fermented by a variety of beneficial microorganisms, stimulating their proliferation and activity. The present work aimed to assess the functionality of green banana (Musa paradisiaca) flour as a source of prebiotics, evaluating its effects on Bifidobacterium species in the GI tract of Rattus norvegicus. For this, the bananas were dehydrated and used as flour of the pulp and of the peels. The resulting flours were added separately to water in a 10% concentration and used as feed supplements for Rattus norvegicus. A total of thirty 4-week-old male animals were divided into 3 groups of 10 individuals. Only regular feed and water were administered ad libitum to group A (negative control). Groups B and C received respectively 1 ml of the peel and pulp flour preparations daily, in addition to regular feed and water ad libitum. The study lasted 42 days, in which feed intake was measured daily. The animals were weighted weekly for posterior feed conversion analysis, and fecal samples of the three groups were collected daily to conduct bifidobacterial counts. The gathered data was statistically analyzed by means of ANOVA and Bonferroni’s tests. Feed conversion rates did not present significant difference between any of the groups and bifidobacterioal counts did not differ significantly between the peel flour group (B) and the control (P>0,05). However, group C (pulp flour group) has shown significant increase in bifidobacterial counts after 21 days (p<0,05). In conclusion, these results indicate that supplementation with the flour of green banana pulp, but not of the peels, can produce a significant increase in the population of bifidobacteria in the colon.