Cereal products are consumed daily by the majority of the population. Popular belief is that these cereal
products, rich in carbohydrates, produce a high glycaemic response and may not be a contributing factor
to the obesity epidemic throughout the world. Recently the food industry has investigated ways of
improving the overall nutritional balance of carbohydrate rich foods and focused on increasing their
dietary fibre (DF) contents at the expense of readily digestible carbohydrates. It is well documented that
dietary fibre is involved in disease prevention and enhanced health of consumers. Moreover, the food
industry can take advantage of the physicochemical properties of fibre to improve the viscosity, texture,
sensory characteristics and shelf-life of their products. The focus of this review paper is on the influence
of DFs (inulin, fructo-oligofructose, beta-glucans, arabinoxylans and resistant starch) supplementation on
the quality and nutritional aspects of common foods containing cereals- pasta, bread, muffins/cakes and
extruded snacks. This review reports on the evidence regarding fibre enrichment of cereal foods and
looks at the advances and future trends in enriched dietary fibre cereal products.
