Research reveals digestive health secrets #3

Marketing challenges

So if you are precluded from saying anything, what can you say?

Culturelle, the consumer packaged good-product containing LGG, claims the product "restores the natural balance of good bacteria in your digestive tract." DanActive claims, "helps strengthen the body's natural defenses." BioGaia says, "reduces colic, improves digestive health and function and boosts immunity."

"In all of these you have no idea about the health end point as demonstrated in the published literature," says Mary Ellen Sanders, Ph.D., president of Dairy & Food Culture Technologies consultancy. "It's getting harder for companies to substantiate benefits of these products. And there's no mechanism for companies to communicate to doctors. FDA says you can do this on a drug but not a food."

Worse, there's a fear that, because probiotics are so effective, the FDA could categorize probiotics as biologics, which would put them in a whole new regulatory class that could quash the entire market.

The fact remains that the next five years should see an explosion of growth of research in the safety and efficacy of different cultures at different levels to different health conditions. Perhaps even enough to make it catch up to the market, which continues to grow rapidly.

Prebiotics

The synbiotic concept – that is, combining probiotic bacteria with prebiotic fibers that act as feedstock for probiotics – has a lot of merit. Europe has led the way in getting the synbiotic concept off the ground as the EU launched the Syncan study, which aimed at studying the effects of prebiotics such as chicory inulin and oligofructose with probiotics in cancer treatment.
Prebiotics modify not just the composition but also the metabolic activity of probiotic bacteria in the gut. Beneficial effects include improving bowel habits and mineral absorption, modulating lipid metabolism and the immune system by slowing down pathogen growth, and decreasing pathogen colonization in the gut and retarding the process of carcinogenesis.16

In the area of cancer, one rat study found oligofructose as well as the long-chain inulin (provided by Beneo) exerted protective effects at an early stage in the onset of cancer.17 Another rat study demonstrated the anticarcinogenic effect of prebiotics and synbiotics but not of probiotics.18

Other researchers studying rats found that, against the background of a diet with a level of fat typical of a Western diet, L. acidophilus and inulin exerted a protective effect against colon cancer.19

A prebiotic like inulin is a true multi-tasker. Beyond operating as a food source for probiotics, food companies are seeing multiple benefits of using prebiotics. For one, they are a low-calorie sweetener source, which makes them useful for reduced-sugar products. Also, inulin can stabilize water into a viscous structure with the same mouthfeel as fat – so not only can it help with high sugar content of products, but also high fat content. Triple bonus: all the while maintaining a smooth, creamy texture. Formulators should note that while inulin is good, you have to get the dose down correctly, as too much can have bad effects on texture.

Finally, inulin is also increasingly being used to boost calcium absorption, especially in dairy foods because dairy has a natural affinity in consumers' minds with calcium content. "Inulin has been shown to improve calcium absorption in some studies, though not in others," said calcium researcher Robert Heaney, Ph.D., from Creighton University in Nebraska.

http://www.functionalingredientsmag.com/content/print.aspx?topic=research-reveals-digestive-health-secrets

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