isomaltooligosaccharides (IMO) (Kan

isomaltooligosaccharides (IMO) (Kaneko et al., 1995) and
xylooligosaccharides (Crittenden and Playne, 2009) are
candidate prebiotics. The fermentation of some oligosac- charides is not as selective as that of FOS, so their pre- biotic status remains in doubt. Therefore, there is a need
for new prebiotic substances that would significantly and
selectively stimulate the growth of lactic acid bacteria,
while not being fermented, or only slightly so, by oth- er intestinal bacteria, some of which are pathogenic. The
search for functional foods or functional food ingredi- ents is undoubtedly one of the leading trends in today’s
food industry.
Promising sources of prebiotics are starch products,
especially resistant starch (RS) (Nugent, 2005), and prod- ucts of partial degradation of starch, that is dextrins
(Betty, 2010; Leszczyński, 2009; Mermelstein, 2009).
The objective of this study was to determine whether
dextrin obtained as a result of heating starch in the pres- ence of citric acid (patent claim no. 392895) is a sub- stance with prebiotic properties (Śliżewska et al., 2010).
Thus, it was examined whether such dextrin would be
utilized as a source of carbon by probiotic and intestinal
bacteria. It was also investigated whether probiotic lac- tobacilli and bifidobacteria cultured with intestinal bacte- ria in the presence of resistant dextrin would be able to
dominate the intestinal isolates. In the study, the prebiot- ic index (PI) and the fermentation products of resistant
dextrin were determined.