I got curious since I realised veggies and grains have tendencies to taste really sweet when cooked for a long time.
Is it possible to cook veggies long enough for them to lose all fiber content?
Unfortunately not, but if you add the enzyme amylase after the cooked starches have cooled down to just above room temperature, some of those starches will break down into simple sugars which will offer a very pleasant sweetness to your meal (or drink).
You can buy this enzyme in powder form from vendors and use it as a part of your kitchen tools, it works well for making plant milks or just as a natural way to sweeten your food.
As for fiber, at best it softens during cooking and allows nutrients to more easily leave the woven matrix, maximizing the bioavailability of nutrients contained in the matrix while minimizing typical anti nutrients found in fibrous food.
Cooking fiber and softening it makes it several times more easy to digest and allows the fermentation process to speed up. Take sweet apples, chop into quarters cook them in water for roughly 30, separate the apples from the water and you will have a delicious apple tea. The apples will be wonderful and soft and did to the cooking process, easier to digest and eat.
Starches are long chains of glucose typically known as polysaccharides, breaking these chains requires very specific conditions as those aforementioned. Same with fiber.
There are 2 types of fiber - soluble and insoluble. You can’t actually get rid of dietary fiber completely, but depending on the type of fiber it can affect your digestive tract in different ways. Only a very small percentage of dietary fiber actually gets metabolized by the body, so all these suggestions about amylase changing the composition of dietary fiber is not entirely correct.
Yes, the enzyme a-amylases can be added to food, typically used in baking to break down fiber molecules into smaller dextrins, but that’s to increase yeast fermentation by increasing the available sugar in the dough. Depending on the fiber molecule (amylopectin or amylose), determines how much monosaccharide (sugar) can be released - amylose is 20% of fiber, it’s a simple straight chained molecule that can be broken down into its base monosaccharides much easier with dietary enzymes, whereas amylopectin is 80% of fiber and is a more complex, branched molecule that is much harder to break down into its monosaccharide components because you need to break each branch from the molecule first into an amylose chain, then reduce that amylose into its base monosaccharide components. As such, you will never turn all of your dietary fiber into sugar because the majority of fiber is a complex, branched molecule that requires multiple steps to break down into its component sugar molecules.
Tbh it’s a waste of money to buy anything labeled as an amylase enzyme since the side effects include diarrhea, gas, constipation, abdominal pain/cramps, nausea/vomiting, etc. Also, the prescription version of this enzyme (it’s called pancrelipase) is used to treat medical conditions resulting in a lack of digestive enzymes, such as cancer, so all the over the counter versions are nowhere near as effective and overpriced imo. You can eat foods high in amylase, like pineapple, mango, papaya, honey, avocado, just to name a few. Also, probiotics help digestive enzymes work better, so sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha, yogurt w/ added probiotics, etc.
Here’s a scientific article that explains amylase further:https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/amylase
In whole plants a variety of carbohydrates are present and some are closer to simple sugar. After regular cooking, some less complex starches will become sugars. Overcooking vegs into fiber free mush, damages many nutrients.
Cool related experiment - chew on a plain cracker (with small sips of water if needed) for a minute or two and it will start tasting sweeter as the starches break down. Not sure how much is mechanical breakdown and how much has to do with any enzymes in saliva but it’s a neat demo nonetheless.