Nowadays, much available processed and highly palatable food such as cream products and fried and convenient food, which usually showed a high energy density, had caused an increase in the intake of dietary
lipids, further leading to significant growth in the prevalence of
obesity.
Chlorophyll, widespread in fruits and vegetables, was proven to have beneficial effects on alleviating
obesity. This study investigated the effects of
chlorophyll on the digestive characteristics of
lipids under in vitro simulated adult and infant gastrointestinal systems.
Chlorophyll decreased the release rate of
free fatty acid (FFA) during in vitro adult and infant intestinal digestion by 69.2% and 60.0%, respectively. Meanwhile, after gastrointestinal digestion,
chlorophyll changed the FFA composition of
soybean oil emulsion and increased the particle size of oil droplets. Interestingly, with the addition of
chlorophyll, the activity of pancreatic
lipase was inhibited during digestion, which may be related to
pheophytin (a derivative of
chlorophyll after gastric digestion). Therefore, the results obtained from isothermal titration calorimetry and molecular docking further elucidated that
pheophytin could bind to pancreatic
lipase with a strong affinity of (4.38 ± 0.76) × 107 M-1 (Ka), while the binding site was
amino acid residue Trp253. The investigation not only explained why
chlorophyll inhibited digestive
enzyme activity to reduce
lipids digestion but also provided exciting opportunities for developing novel
chlorophyll-based healthy products for dietary application in preventing
obesity.