A review of current analytical methods for the determination of prebiotics in foods

Prebiotics are a group that improves the human intestinal microbiota. The relationship between prebiotics and human health has been an area of increasing interest in recent years. Fructo-oligosaccharides and galacto-oligosaccharides are the two important groups of prebiotics with beneficial effects on human health. Besides that, more and more carbohydrates have shown a good potential to be prebiotics has been studied. This study presents a review of the characteristics, properties, and analytical methods used for the determination of prebiotics in food products. Most of the methods found using chromatographic methods, especially HPAEC - PAD but also another method, such as spectrometric methods have been presented. A discussion was presented highlighting the drawbacks of current analytical methods and the need to develop these methods to analyze the complex food samples containing prebiotics.