Inulin

The word we came across in the print encyclopedia was inulin. My initial thought was that perhaps it was a typo–That it was supposed to be insulin. The definition given by the encyclopedia is seven lines, with a tiny bit of detail, but not much. We also looked it up on britannica.com, and that entry is very similar to the entry in the encyclopedia, though it is a little longer. It gives the definition, in pretty plain English, along with a couple of examples. The Wikipedia entry definitely goes into more detail; it’s probably about a couple pages of information, and it also includes a list of the different foods that contain inulin. It also clarifies at the top of the page “Not to be confused with insulin.” Since the Wikipedia entry is longer, it has a lot more scientific detail that I don’t understand; I do understand the entry in the encyclopedia. We checked the history, and it has been edited over 500 times. In my opinion, that says a lot about the validity of the entry; if multiple people have been reviewing it, they can correct others’ mistakes. What I want to know is who is spending their time editing a Wikipedia page about inulin! I know Wikipedia has editors, and I assume many of those editors would need to do outside research, but I also assume the people doing the editing are scientists or biology students.