Have you noticed how we have almost come full circle with probiotics in food.
Time was, when you got all the bacteria you could handle from your food. Good bacteria, bad bacteria – it was all there in your daily diet.
We learned techniques to increase the good bacteria whilst reducing the bad to a level that our cast-iron gut could handle. And we could handle most of the bugs and nasties discovered in our food.
But then we got paranoid about bacteria. Eliminate them from everything was our battle cry.
We sterilized and bacterialized, we applied fungicides and antibiotics to everything – whether they needed it or not.
We never stopped to consider whether some of those bacteria just might be doing us good.
Then we discovered that some bacteria were actually good for us. We discovered that mice raised in totally sterile surroundings had problems similar to some that we were seeing in people.
So – hey presto – we invented probiotics.
But probiotics are nothing new. They’ve been with us for as long as man has – well – been man!
They were in our food living happily within the mass of lactic acid bacteria that enjoyed the environment that many of our traditionally fermented foods provided.
So we found the ones that seemed the most important to us and we bred them and bottled them.
Bacteria in a bottle. We were happy for awhile.
And then we thought – why not add them to food?
Forget about yogurt – that’s what our grandmothers were doing. Lets add probiotics to other food.
So we set about developing a coating so that an obliging probiotic could be baked, boiled or frozen.
They’re popping up in breakfast cereals, health bars, chocolate and frozen deserts.
But can this in anyway be the same as the “old fashioned” way of allowing foods to ferment so as to provide an environment suitable for health promoting bacteria.
In some of these old fashioned foods there were hundreds of different species of good bacteria. Were they probiotic as defined by the WHO? Probably not.
World Health Organization
Probiotics are live microorganisms which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host.”
But they did do us good – in a general sort of way – that just didn’t make for really dramatic research.
So we swap hundreds of lactic acid bacteria – anyone of which might just be a probiotic that we haven’t tested yet to fully understand what it does – for one known probiotic.
I mean – how much money do you think gets thrown at research on “peasant” foods that no-one can make a quick buck from?
For example – a study was done on sour Mifen which is a traditional fermented rice noodle dish from China.
14 samples were gathered from local factories and analyzed.
A total of 170 different lactic acid bacteria and 96 yeasts were found!
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Put that in your breakfast cereal and smoke it!!
This is food that has been eaten for centuries so we know that there is nothing harmful about it. Don’t you think that within that complex web of bacterial life there are the good bacteria we need to aid our digestion and immune system.
And amongst the most numerous species was Lactobacillus plantarum which we now bottle and sell to people with IBS and other gastric issues.
Don’t think it has quite made it to the breakfast cereals yet but give it time!
Your thoughts – should we be returning to these foods of our ancestors – the sauerkraut, fermented cheeses and kimchi – or do we embrace the brave new world of probiotic chocolate?
