Cereal Chem. 70:712-715   |  VIEW ARTICLE

Effect of Twin-Screw Extrusion on the Nutritional Quality of Wheat, Barley, and Oats.

W.- M. Wang and C. F. Klopfenstein. Copyright 1993 by the American Association of Cereal Chemists, Inc. 

Rat weight gains and feed efficiencies from diets of extruded oats (with husks), barley (with husks), or wheat were no different than those from raw grain diets. Animals that were fed extruded grains had lower serum and liver cholesterol levels than those fed the raw grain and control (casein-based) diets. Of the raw grain diets, only the barley diet had a hypocholesterolemic effect when compared to the control diet. Rats fed extruded barley had lower serum and liver cholesterol than any other grain-fed group. Factors contributing to the greater hypocholesterolemic effects of barley diets could be the higher total and soluble beta-glucan contents and higher viscosities of the barley diets versus the oat, wheat, and control diets. Diet viscosity was negatively correlated with serum (r = -0.7906, P = 0.0013) and liver (r = -0.7937, P = 0.0015) cholesterol. Data support the hypothesis that dietary fibers may exert their cholesterol-lowering effect by increasing the viscosity of material in the digestive tract.