Ingesting Microwave-Cooked Starch Could Tailor the Intestinal Microbiota and Glucose/Lipid Level of Mice Fed with Low-Fat Diet

While the microwave technique is widely used in the heating of starch-based food matrices, it is still unclear how ingesting microwave-cooked starch (containing resistant starch (RS)/slowly digestible starch (SDS)) regulates the intestinal microbiota and glucose/lipid levels of the body. Here, it was revealed that microwave cooking could strengthen the ordered structures of starch following storage (using conventional cooking as a reference) and thus led to a high SDS + RS content (72.90%). Compared to a normal diet, ingesting the diet with microwave-treated starch significantly decreased the body weight, blood glucose level, fat index, adipocyte size, and LDL-C content of mice. This could be related to the improved abundance and diversity of the intestinal microbiota in mice. In particular, there were a reduction in Firmicutes abundance (20.92%), being significantly correlated with the lowered levels of above glucose/lipid indicators, and an increase in Bacteroidota abundance (4.46 times), being linked to the reduced contents of primary and secondary bile acids.