Impact of a three month long consumption of two eggs enriched in ω-3, ω-5 and ω-7 fatty acids on the intestinal and metabolic tolerance of volunteers and on a set of health parameters

Details

Supervisors

Larondelle, Yvan

Faculty

Faculté des bioingénieurs

Degree label

Master [120] : bioingénieur en chimie et bioindustries

Abstract

With the tremendous increase of metabolic disorders in the population, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, inflammation and cardiovascular diseases, which are associated with an unhealthy lifestyle, many efforts have been devoted to the enrichment of common foodstuff in order to improve the dietary intakes. Several polyunsaturated fatty acids groups, namely ω-3 fatty acids, conjugated linoleic acids (CLA) and conjugated linolenic acids (CLnA), have shown beneficial health effects on those metabolic disorders. The first step of this work was the natural enrichment of eggs in docosahexaenoic acid (DHA, ω-3), α-linolenic acid (ALA, ω-3), punicic acid (PunA, an ω-5 CLnA) and rumenic acid (RmA, an ω-7 CLA). The enriched egg production was operated through a change in the laying hens' diet, by supplementing staple feed with foods components containing PunA and ALA. The metabolism of the hens was shown to efficiently convert PunA into RmA and ALA into DHA. Control eggs were produced through the addition of 10\% w/w olive oil in the laying hens' diet. The test eggs showed about two times lower levels of monounsaturated fatty acids (oleic acid) and significantly higher levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids (DHA, ALA, RmA, PunA), as compared to the control eggs. This master's thesis was associated with a clinical study composed of 24 volunteers presenting a risk of developing a metabolic disorder. These subjects were invited to eat two control or two enriched eggs every day during three months in order for us to assess, on the one hand, if the daily consumption of two enriched eggs is well tolerated by the consumers, and, on the other hand, if that intake has an influence on a set of health parameters. The volunteers were thus subjected to medical examinations, blood samplings and questionnaires on day 0, 30, 60 and 90 of the trial. The data obtained are strictly confidential.