Abstract
Dietary powder from Plantaginis ovatae testa was prepared by mechnical milling/grinding of the outer layer of the seed. The crystalline/surface structures of its powder (100 mesh) were examined, and several physical functionalities including, water capacity, oil holding capacity, emulsion/foam properties and physiological functionality such as in-vitro glucose and bile acid retarding effects were also investigated. Water holding capacity(WHC) of psyllium powder was $33.71{\pm}0.10g$ water retained/g solid at room temperature, whileas oil holding capacity(OHC) for soybean or rice bran oil were about 1.80g oil retained/g solid. These values of WHC and OHC were about 5.6 times higher and 2.8 times lower than those of commercial ${\alpha}$-cellulose, respectively. Changes of pH showed a small effect on WHC, but WHC increased with temperature. Emulsion capacity of 2%(w/v) psyllium was about 60% level of 0.5%(w/v) xanthan gum but emulsion stability after incubation of 24 hours showed about 1.4 times improvement of xanthan gum(0.5%,w/v). Also, psylliume(above 2%, w/v) alone had higher foam capacity than that of xanthan(1.1 times) and especially, 1 or 2% addition of psyllium improved the foam stability of protein solution(1% albumin+0.5% $CaCl_2$) by factor of 3.3 and 6.0 times, respectively. The glucose and bile acid retarding effects of psyllium powder were relatively very excellent suggesting the prevention from diabetes and arteriosclerosis. Especially, psyllium showed the 3.7 and 3.3 times higher effect on in-vitro glucose and bile acid retardation than those of commercial ${\alpha}$-cellulose, respectively.