Indian Institute of Technology – Kharagpur’s agricultural and food engineering department is looking at developing the concept of fermented functional foods for healthy living. It is applying fermentation to design and manufacture of functional foods which cover probiotic foods.
“Functional foods like probiotic foods are known to contain live microbes and the fermentation may produce or release health promoting compounds in the substrate medium,” explained H N Mishra from the agricultural and food engineering department of IIT-Kharagpur .
In a presentation at the Defence Food Research Laboratory (DFRL) international symposium, Mishra presented a paper highlighting fermented functional foods.
Probiotics are micro organisms found naturally in foods that stimulate the growth of beneficial organisms within the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Probiotics are widely used to prepare fermented dairy products such as yoghurt or freeze-dried cultures and non-dairy products like cereals and vegetables fermented products. Several health-related effects associated with intake of probiotic, including alleviation of lactose intolerance and immune enhancement have been reported in human studies. Some evidence suggests a role for probiotics in reducing the risk of rotavirus induced diarrhoea and colon cancer. The probiotics bacteria most commonly used are Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, Streptococcus and Entrococcus.
Mishra said, “We have been looking at probiotic bacteria to be suitable for large-scale industrial production and processing with an additional requirement that they maintain a good viability during storage. These requirements pose a significant challenge from a technological stand point, as many probiotics being of intestinal origin are sensitive to stresses such as oxygen, heat and acid exposure.”
He added, “As a consequence, these bacteria perform poorly in many food environments and particularly in fermented foods which can be highly acidic. Numerous human feeding studies have shown that the human gut microbiota can be modulated with probiotics, prebiotics and synbiotics to increase the numbers and activity of the Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium. All the three microbiota management tools have shown some positive health outcomes against specific disease conditions.”
Efforts are on to develop the new synbiotic products which contain both probiotic and prebiotics carbohydrates. There is still only limited evidence of enhanced health efficiency due to synbiotics over that of the probiotic alone or the prebiotic alone. In addition, specific strains of probiotics are not yet being selected for their ability to act synergistically with a specific prebiotic carbohydrate.
Future developments will include fermented functional foods where matching of probiotic bacterial stains with specific prebiotic carbohydrates will assume greater importance, according to Mishra.
