Corey Pierce
The notion is that there is a war between good and evil going on right now in your gut. Good and evil bacteria that is. They’re duking it out and you need to throw the good bacteria a weapon to help it defend itself.
If you have been in front of a TV in the past year chances are you’ve heard of probiotics and perhaps seen abs being orbited by all number of technical looking arrows and diagrams in an attempt to explain their vast benefits. Now pre biotics are showing up joining forces with probiotics not only in yogurt but also in cheese and other dairy products and even a new line of cookies. (Dairy products are the most common vehicles for probiotics because they protect the bacteria from being broken down by stomach acids enabling them to make it through the digestive system to the intestinal tract intact.)
The rationale behind probiotics is that they are intended to assist the body’s naturally occurring gut flora to re-establish itself. They are occasionally recommended after a course of antibiotics. (Get it? Pro biotics balance the effects of anti biotics.) Maintenance of a healthy gut flora is however dependent on many factors particularly the quality of food you’re eating. Prebiotics on the other hand are there to feed the probiotics — something ad campaigns don’t do much to explain suggesting only that their presence makes their product even more unique and valuable.
The weird thing is not many average Joes out there understand the role the approximately 100 trillion micro-organisms play in the delicate ecosystem that is your intestinal tract. Most doctors and scientists don’t even fully comprehend them considering there are over 400 known bacterial species many of which have not even been identified yet because they can’t be cultured. But we are expected to take for granted that not only are pro- (and pre-) biotics somehow balancing this good and evil and that this is a good thing but that these biotics are acting as mediator down there able to identify which of the bacteria are bad and shouldn’t be there in the first place.
Don’t get me wrong — I adore yogurt. I buy Bles Wold or Vital Green Farms yogurt and sometimes make my own using a bit of it as starter with warm milk and a jar wrapped in a sweater on my kitchen counter. However I’ve been reading up on all this probiotic hoopla and have not been able to establish any difference between regular plain old yogurt — the stuff that became popular in the ’60s that has always been created using active cultures — and those labelled “probiotic.” The World Health Organization suggests we define probiotics as “live micro-organisms which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host.” In Canada all products labelled “yogurt” must be produced using active bacterial cultures. So this new reference seems more like a new marketing strategy to get us to buy specific brands of yogurt and more of it.
In my attempt to decipher the difference I stumbled upon the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics (its mission: “to engender and disseminate information on high quality multidisciplinary scientific investigation in the fields of probiotics and prebiotics”). It would seem any information they provide might be biased considering the Industry Advisory Committee members include Danone General Mills Kraft Nestle Unilever etc.
Yogurt is produced by introducing lactic acid bacteria into milk which is then fermented during which the bacteria convert the natural sugars in milk (lactose) into lactic acid. The increased acidity causes milk proteins to thicken and the lactic acid gives it its tang.
Strains of the genera lactobacillus and bifidobacterium are two principal kinds of probiotic bacteria lactobacillus being one of the primary bacteria used to make regular yogurt. ( Lactobacillus is present in the gastrointestinal tract where they are symbiotic and make up a small portion of the gut flora and change the PH of your colon.)
So it would seem there isn’t much difference between yogurts labelled "probiotic" and all the others that contain active bacterial cultures which is all of them besides perhaps using different strains of bacteria which aren’t always distinguished from one another anyway.
There are many many strains of bacteria — even when they are in the same species they have different probiotic functions. To keep tabs on each one particularly when there is such a wide variety of factors would be difficult so there is a tendency to generalize about probiotic effects assuming that any body of research on specific probiotic strains can be applied to any product marketed as a probiotic.
So the challenge is to convince consumers that certain bacterial strains are better than others. Many of these strains of bacteria are actually patented and have brand names – for example Activia is scientifically known as bifidobacterium animalis DN-173 010 . (I always find the notion of patenting living things a little creepy even if they are bacteria.) The biggest claim Activia makes and the one that it does have studies to back up is that it improves intestinal transit (read: makes you regular) presumably preventing transit strikes in your downtown core. For this and other supposed benefits Danone recommends "regular daily intake of Activia by everyone." If I had a food product I’d recommend its daily consumption by everyone on the planet too.
Here’s another thought: if probiotics (presuming they are in fact as effective as their makers claim) have the opposite effect of antibiotics are they something that we should be ingesting every day? We are suffering the consequences of a population that takes antibiotics to excess rendering them ineffective (that is we build up immunity to certain antibiotics over time). Doesn’t it make sense that our bodies would react to probiotics in a similar way? We can’t take antibiotics every day of our lives. If we added them to food they could certainly lose their effect over time as we adapted to them. And is changing the natural climate of your digestive tract something you want to be doing on a daily basis anyway? These are all my own questions and of course would warrant further studies. In related news at the end of January yogurt giant Danone’s U.S. subsidiary was hit with a lawsuit that accuses the company of using false advertising to promote its probiotic yogurt and of convincing consumers to pay more for its product because of its supposed health benefits.
The lawsuit claims Danone’s own studies failed to support its claims that Activia as well as its other yogurt varieties are “clinically” and “scientifically proven” to have unique health benefits. The lawsuit cited reports showing there was no conclusive evidence that Danone’s bacteria prevented illness or was beneficial to healthy adults.
For the full story visit www.just-food.com and search for Danone.
Julie Van Rosendaal is a food journalist and cookbook author food and nutrition columnist for the Calgary Eyeopener on CBC Radio and co-host (with Ned Bell) of It’s Just Food on Access and Canadian Learning Television.
