Probiotics
INTRODUCTION
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food,” the age-old quote by Hippocrates, is certainly the tenet of today. With the growing interest in self-care and integrative medicine coupled with our health embracing baby boomer population, recognition of the link between diet and health has become increasingly strengthened. As a result, the market for functional foods, or foods that promote health beyond providing basic nutrition, is flourishing. Within, the functional foods movement is the small but rapidly expanding arena of probiotics - live microbial food supplements that beneficially affect an individual by improving intestinal microbial balance. The consumers’ overwhelming interest in and demand for functional foods, including probiotics, make it imperative that health professionals stay abreast of the latest research findings and available products.
The functional food market has been rapidly growing for the past years but the development of new products is still imperative due to the increasing demand for healthy, high quality foods associated to changes in consumers‟ life-style. Incorporation of probiotics into cereal-based products is therefore desirable since it can combine the healthy formulation of a cereal mixture, the added value of prebiotic ingredients, and the beneficial effects of the probiotic bacteria. Encapsulation techniques have been recently applied to protect probiotic cells from storage conditions in order to increase shelf-life of probiotic products and to overcome other technological hurdles such as the food production stresses. The aim of this research study was to develop process technology for a probiotic cereal bar by microencapsulating probiotics using the method of freeze drying and evaluating the viability of encapsulated probiotics in a cereal bar. A cereal mixture comprising of corn flakes, oat flakes, wheat bran were used to prepare cereal bar. The probiotic strains Lactobacillus casei (MTCC 1423),
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food,” the age-old quote by Hippocrates, is certainly the tenet of today. With the growing interest in self-care and integrative medicine coupled with our health embracing baby boomer population, recognition of the link between diet and health has become increasingly strengthened. As a result, the market for functional foods, or foods that promote health beyond providing basic nutrition, is flourishing. Within, the functional foods movement is the small but rapidly expanding arena of probiotics - live microbial food supplements that beneficially affect an individual by improving intestinal microbial balance. The consumers’ overwhelming interest in and demand for functional foods, including probiotics, make it imperative that health professionals stay abreast of the latest research findings and available products.
The functional food market has been rapidly growing for the past years but the development of new products is still imperative due to the increasing demand for healthy, high quality foods associated to changes in consumers‟ life-style. Incorporation of probiotics into cereal-based products is therefore desirable since it can combine the healthy formulation of a cereal mixture, the added value of prebiotic ingredients, and the beneficial effects of the probiotic bacteria. Encapsulation techniques have been recently applied to protect probiotic cells from storage conditions in order to increase shelf-life of probiotic products and to overcome other technological hurdles such as the food production stresses. The aim of this research study was to develop process technology for a probiotic cereal bar by microencapsulating probiotics using the method of freeze drying and evaluating the viability of encapsulated probiotics in a cereal bar. A cereal mixture comprising of corn flakes, oat flakes, wheat bran were used to prepare cereal bar. The probiotic strains Lactobacillus casei (MTCC 1423),