Consuming foods with added live microbes, known as probiotics, is a great way to maintain good health. Probiotic products are organic microbial supplements that affect a person by improving their intestinal microbial balance. The Expert Committee defined the term probiotic as ”live microorganisms which upon ingestion in certain numbers exert health benefits beyond inherent general nutrition.”
Most probiotic products available in stores today are yogurts and fermented milk beverages, which pose a problem for vegetarians, and people who are lactose intolerant. Furthermore, there has been a growing demand for non-dairy probiotic products as more people turn to vegetarianism and veganism in developing nations.
Taking this into consideration, food scientists and health professionals have been experimenting with legumes, cereals, fruits, and vegetables as potential candidates for the development of probiotic beverages that can serve as an alternative to dairy. Some have even incorporated sustainability issues into the equation by making use of food waste.
Legumes And Cereals
For example, a team of NUS food scientists recently came up with a way to use surplus bread, a significant waste problem for food retailers and bakeries around the world. Before that, the same team found a way to use residue from making tofu and soy milk, known as okara, which usually is thrown away. Both the bread and the okara were turned into gut-healthy probiotic beverages, patented and ready for commercialization.
Miss Linh, one of the researchers involved in this project, said:
I usually cannot finish a loaf of bread before the expiry date. It is a waste to discard the nutrients in bread, so as a food science student, I was motivated to find a way to repurpose surplus bread by upcycling it into something delicious and nutritious.
The bread-based probiotic drink is creamy, slightly fizzy, and sweet. It has a shelf-life of up to six weeks stored at room temperature – all the while maintaining high counts of live gut-friendly microbes, enough to deliver maximum benefits to the consumer.
The okara-based probiotic drink has a slightly sweet and sour taste, akin to a sour plum. Associate Professor Liu Shao Quan, the project supervisor, said:
Okara has an unpleasant smell and taste – it smells fishy, tastes bland, and has a gritty mouthfeel. Our breakthrough lies in our unique combination of enzymes, probiotics, and yeast that work together to make okara less gritty, and give it a fruity aroma while keeping the probiotics alive.
In regards to the shelflife, Associate Professor Liu Shao Quan, the project supervisor, said:
If refrigerated, we expect our drink to last at least three months, although we haven’t yet done rigorous testing under refrigerated conditions.
Fruits And Vegetables
Making probiotic beverages using fruits as the base ingredient is more challenging because of their high acidic content which makes the living environment harsh for the microbes. Nevertheless, there are ways to overcome this, and several studies have been focusing on making it possible since fruit and vegetable juices already have very high nutritional value.
Kinnow, mango, guava, blackcurrant, orange, and pineapple have all worked as bases for probiotic drinks. All these juices are rich in vitamins, antioxidants, carbohydrates, proteins, dietary fibers, and minerals, providing an ideal food matrix for carrying the probiotic bacteria. Pineapple is a popular choice because it is the third most-produced tropical fruit crop in the world, following banana and citrus. To ensure the microbes don’t die, the probiotic culture is added after the heat treatment of the juice (pasteurization).
Studies testing vegetable juices have made them probiotic by adding different probiotic strains during the juice-making process. Vegetables used include cabbage, tomato, carrot, and beetroot.
Health Benefits
Consuming probiotics in adequate amounts provides a range of health benefits, from boosting immunity to helping digestion. Here are a few ways that probiotics are great for you:
- High cholesterol: It decreases LDL-cholesterol.
- Constipation: It reduces the severity of constipation, improved bowel movement frequency, and improves stool consistency.
- Respiratory tract infections: It weakens allergic airway responses, protects against respiratory pathogens, and reduces allergic inflammation.
- Urogenital tract infections: It helps control urogenital infections in women.
- Helicobacter pylori infection: It inhibits Helicobacter pylori in vitro, which has been associated with stomach carcinoma, gastritis, lymphomas, and gastric ulcer.
- Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD): It has a potential therapeutic benefit for patients suffering from IBD.
- Cancer: It lowers the incidence of colorectal cancer.
- Allergies: It can be used to manage atopic eczema in infants and to prevent early atopic disease in children at high risk.
- Stimulation of the immune system: It enhances natural immune function in healthy people.
- Prevention of diarrhea: It prevents or alleviates infantile diarrhea.
- Lactose intolerance: It improves lactose digestion in lactose maldigestors.
- Weight Loss: Some probiotics aid in weight loss. (However, the strain Lactobacillus acidophilus has been linked to weight gain).
To experience all the health benefits listed above, you have to consume adequate amounts. Some probiotics can’t handle the acids in the human body and are destroyed in the stomach before they even reach your gut. Meaning, you don’t get any of the desired benefits. To avoid this, all you have to do is drink enough of it. The International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics says to intake at least one billion live probiotic cells every day.
The NUS team says their bread and okara probiotic beverages contain this amount per serving. If it’s out on store shelves, it likely meets the requirement, so all you have to do is make sure you consume at least one servings worth at once per day.
