Interestingly,quinoa and amaranth seeds are consumed in the same way as cereals and, as previously mentioned, they have comparable dietary fibre contents, however, the monosaccharide composition of quinoa and amaranth indicates that these IDFs does not contain xylans as found in cereals, and, instead, resemble that of tissues from fruits, vegetables, and leguminous seeds. An important difference between these pseudocereals and fruits and vegetables is that dietary fibre in pseudocereal seeds is dehydrated as opposed to the hydrated tissues from fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables
are usually consumed in a state, in which the tissues are characterised by high water content and low amounts of lignin (Eastwood, 1992), which helps explain their lower dietary fibre contents (Johnson & Southgate, 1994). The dietary fibre content of fruits and vegetables ranges from 1.5–2.5 g/100 g of dry weight (Marlett & Vollendorf, 1993; Selvendran & Robertson, 1994). This is considerably lower than the sources of dietary fibre studied here which contained between 9 and 12 g/100 g of dry weight (Fig. 2).Although the monosaccharide compositions of dietary fibres from the pseudocereals and those from fruits, vegetables and leguminous seeds appear to be similar, the morphological differences between the types of tissues that constitute dietary fibre may be an indication that the structural features of the component polymers and the interactions among them will vary