Something in Your Food is Moving

Dekortage writes "The New York Times has a report on probiotic food: food that has live bacteria in it. From the article: "[for Dannon's] Activia, a line of yogurt with special live bacteria that are marketed as aiding regularity, sales in United States stores have soared well past the $100 million mark.... Probiotics in food are part of a larger trend toward 'functional foods,' which stress their ability to deliver benefits that have traditionally been the realm of medicine or dietary supplements.""

Patent infringement?

Activia, a line of yogurt with special live bacteria that are marketed as aiding regularity

Taco Bell should sue them for patent infringement.

Re:Patent infringement?

They said "aiding regularity," not "forcibly exploding your colon out through your asshole."

Re:

What's the difference? Everything ends up in the toliet bowl of life...

Re:Patent infringement?

They said "aiding regularity," not "forcibly exploding your colon out through your asshole."

Well, if it bursts out on the hour, every hour...

You call it Old Faithful

You call it 'Old Faithful' [wikipedia.org] and tourists come to watch.

Re:Patent infringement?

Humans can't chase and kill 99.9% of wild animals

Just because you can't doesn't mean your ancestors couldn't. Humans chase down prey largely by endurance, sure, a cheetah can run 60Mph for a few hundred yards, but he won't recover enough to repeat that dash when the 10 "cave men" catch up. Humans are pack hunters like many others, and humans, like many other hunters, use cammaflauge and stealth to get close enough to the prey to kill. And besides, .1% of anaimals is a pretty wide variety of animals compared to the 10 or so varieties we depend on today as food sources. The survivors of the Ice Age that killed off almost all Homo Sapiens all those Millenia ago were known to be huge meat eaters, dining on the wicked fast shellfish that gathered on the shores of ancient Africa (HUGE piles of proto-oyster shells are ample evidence of the evolutionary presence of meat in our diets). Insects were likely another mainstay (termite mounds keep several African villages alive as I recall). Small rodents and infants of other species could be easily captured by humans working in groups. You think we just happened uppon domesticated sheep one day?

Any thoughts you have that proto man had a concious and would choose death over killing are comical. Our ancestors were brutal survivors living on the edge, domestication of animals is one of the things that gave us the spare calories to invent things like morals.

Activia

I've been eating Activia for breakfast every morning for probably 6 months, and haven't really noticed that it's doing any good in the gastro department. Maybe if I quit having vodka for dinner...

Re:Activia

Perhaps someone here can tell me, what is the real difference between this fancy 'Activia' brand, and normal live culture yogurt (such as the Yoplait custard style I've been eating for 20 years when I want yogurt)?

Good yogurt has always had live bacteria in it, and the health effects of eating that live bacteria are not news.

Re:Activia

They patented it and called it a healthy sounding name.

Re:Activia

Perhaps someone here can tell me, what is the real difference between this fancy 'Activia' brand, and normal live culture yogurt (such as the Yoplait custard style I've been eating for 20 years when I want yogurt)?

Check the ingredients, lately?

Yoplait, etc. are marketed as yoghurts in the same way colourful beverages are sold as juice: there might be some juice in there somewhere, and it may look like juice, but all in all, it's mostly something else.

Don't recall off-hand, but Yoplait, etc. are predominantly milk and milk solids with a healthy (pun intended) dose of various gums and emulsifiers added to give it the texture of real yoghurt.

To take this a step further, what's the difference between real cheese, and the waxy pasteurised stuff sold as cheese in the typical supermarket? Easy -- one is cheese; the other is something else. Anyone that has even once tasted either will agree this.

Real yoghurt (and real cheese) are available in the U.S., but typically only at high-priced cheese shops, specialty stores, or similar venues that escape notice from regulators. IIRC, it's illegal (as much so as Cuban cigars), but the market for the stuff is alive and well (again, pun intended), and the customers are loyal and happy to pay. Not too many people make real yoghurt locally, but it's not uncommon to find raw cheeses available at better farmers markets.

Cheese

It's funny that you would mention cheese, since the cheese that most Americans and Canadians are familiar with is Cheddar -- the one and only cheese (to my knowledge) that is NOT pasteurized here. Probably why it's so popular.

Frankly, I'm surprised European cheese producers have never launched a WTO grievance over our bizarre pasteurization laws, which mostly just keep European cheeses out of our markets. Research has shown that pasteurizing cheese increases the chances of a pathogenic strain of bacteria taking hold, since there will be no competing bacteria to inhibit the pathogen's development should one take hold.

I'd comment on the cigars too, but I'm not American so it wouldn't really mean anything. At the job I do to pay for school, I sell several cuban cigarillos a day (and usually at least one pack of American cigars). Ironically the cubans that we have are of very low quality, so the Americans sell rather better -- entire packs at a time rather than singles. Funny how these things work out.

Re:Activia

The UK bans unpasteurised products? That's funny--the unpasteurised cheese I regularly buy at Waitrose, Sainsbury's, and the local farmer's market must all be illegal!

FYI, pasteurisation is not required here in the UK, nor is it required almost anywhere else except the US. There is no good reason for it at all, particularly in the case of cheese, where any cheese older than a couple of months is harmless for anyone with a normal immune system who is not pregnant. People can take care of themselves, if food is properly labelled and people are educated; in the same way I do not eat dish detergent, a pregnant woman would not eat unpasteurised cheese. If you doubt the viability of this, consider the fact that most countries in the world do not require pasteurisation, and yet (miraculously!) do not have particularly high rates of related illnesses, miscarriages left and right, etc.

Re:Activia

The GP is being a food snob, and mostly (s)he's right. It has to do with how the FDA requires milk to be pasteurized. Rather than being pasteurized for a longer amount of time at slightly lower temperatures (allowing more "good" bacteria to survive), the FDA requires that milk be pretty much nuked at "critical mass" temperatures for a shorter amount of time, because it's cheaper and generally results in a bacterial holocaust.

Milk in other countries isn't pasteurized to the FDA "Chernobyl" Standard, and because of that the cheeses and other products made from it can't be sold in the United States. Whether or not this somehow means that all cheese sold in the US is inferior is up for argument. I'm of the opinion that it's not all bad.

Re:Activia

Perhaps someone here can tell me, what is the real difference between this fancy 'Activia' brand, and normal live culture yogurt (such as the Yoplait custard style I've been eating for 20 years when I want yogurt)?
 
Good yogurt has always had live bacteria in it, and the health effects of eating that live bacteria are not news.

The real difference is that Activia invented some fake-latin sounding names for their bacteria, trademarked 'em, and then used it in their marketing campaign.

Consumer Reports mentioned them a few issues ago, and said that a test of Activia's bacteria showed that only 0.1% of them survived the passage through the stomach. So the idea that they somehow aid digestion is rather silly.

Re:Activia

Less than 0.1% of sperm survive the passage through the vagina and fertilize an egg. Is the idea that they somehow aid reproduction rather silly?

Re:Activia

I think that's common knowledge. There's an old joke that goes something like:

"Q: What's the difference between (city-you-hate) and yoghurt?

A: Yoghurt has an active, living culture."

Live bacteria

food that has live bacteria in it

What, like normal yogurt and cheese?

Although perhaps in the USA everything is sterilized? Seems a bit nuts to kill all the bateria (yogurt is essentially a culture of bateria) and then add them back in again.

Re:Live bacteria

All yogurt contains some live cultures, and one of the consumers interviewed in the article even said so. It's just that the author of the article is too brain-damaged to comprehend what they have written, apparently.

Re:Live bacteria

Seems a bit nuts to kill all the bateria (yogurt is essentially a culture of bateria) and then add them back in again.

I used to work in a hospital pharmacy and we stocked several products for doing that very thing. Some patients who had severe infections and aggressive antibioitic therapy would have their natually occuring intestinal bacteria wiped out. These products were given to the patients to help restore the bacterial flora and the ability to digest food without discomfort. IIRC, most of the products were essentially just cultured lactobacillus strains but an MD or pharmacist could elaborate.

Re:Live bacteria

Yes, I'm afraid US food is dead. Go to any US supermarket and all you see is food in plastic bags. Once you leave the produce section, the whole supermarket looks like a morgue full of sealed body bags that contain once living foodstuffs that have been killed/hydrogenated/frozen/sealed/irradiated to extend their shelf life. Man I miss the open air market in Gif sur Yvette.

I support probiotic foods

In fact, I consume a good quantity of it on a regular basis. This is assuming that bottle-conditioned unfiltered beer counts.

Man, live yeast really gives you gas of doom, though.

Re:I support probiotic foods

Not necessarily. Different strains of brewer's yeast have varying alcohol tolerences; some can survive in a solution that is over 10% alcohol. Champagne yeast is incredibly tolerant and neutral, and is used sometimes to bottle condition high ABV beers.

New to the US

There have been probiotic yogurts for sale in Europe (or at least in the UK) for quite some time now. I lived there 2005-2006 and ate this stuff daily (yogurt tastes better there on average anyway).

If you ask me, the US has a long way to go before reaching the standards in terms of taste and healthiness (is that a word?) that grocery food has set in the UK, Belgium, Netherlands, etc.

Re:New to the US

"Healthiness" is a word, but not the word you want. People are "healthy." Food is "healthful."

IBS

That Activia stuff seems to help with irritable bowel syndrome [aboutibs.org] (which in turn was caused by a $300/month starbucks habit). My wife is a dietitian and recommended I try it out.

Now what we need is probiotic coffee so I can go back to a caffeine-fueled frenzy and finish this project I am working on.

Trouble stomachs

The fastest way to consumers' hearts may be through their troubled stomachs.

Maybe if the food industry didn't fuck so much with food to maximize profits in the first place, people wouldn't have so many troubled stomachs?

Re:Trouble stomachs

Rule of thumb as in general rule for a lot of stuff. But yes.. typical flour you get has been processed to the point where it gives you nothing but calories when you eat something made with it. It's been broken down beyond nutritional value, bleached of all the remaining vitamins, irradiated to remove any trace organisms and then "refortified" with lab made vitamins that your body doesn't react to, much less use.

Refined sugar is the same. Nothing but empty calories. Refined white rice, same story.

Oats... oats won't last long out in the open... they'll go stale first (absorbing moisture, then re-drying) then they'll start to rot like they should. I wouldn't advise storing your oats in open air containers. Lentils are also good. This type of food is typically freeze-dried which is not too much of a problem but try to find grains and seeds that haven't been irradiated... they'll taste much better, though they will go bad (a few weeks later) as soon as you expose them to air and the little micros reactivate...

WTF is this stuff doing on SlashDot?

WTF is this stuff doing on SlashDot?

Yogurt contains live cultures? No shit. Thanks for the fourth-grade science lesson.

Let's get a couple stories for the IQ > 60 set out here today, please.

Re:

Have you browsed the yogurt aisle at your local grocery store lately? You need to actually read labels to make sure you're getting the stuff w/ live, active cultures. Ditto sour cream. If you're lucky, maybe 3 brands out of 20 will have the stuff. Thes

Success with probiotics

TMI WARNING! If talk of bodily functions disturbs you, go to the next post... ...With that in mind, I've had measurable success with taking probiotics ( in pill form ). I suffer from IBS, and suppose I can be called "overly regular". Since taking probiotic pills, I've notice more "normal" feeling, um, functions. Even if I stuck to a good diet, things were different until I did the probiotics.

Theres been some research, and lots of controversy, suggesting that the overabundance of antibiotics in our food, as well as the overuse of them by doctors and such, is just ruining our GI tract. There's lots of people walking around these days who probably cant' even remember what a normal bm is anymore. But ya, probiotics do appear to help.

Slashvertisement (this is 1930 technology)

Brazilian people (and people from other countries) have been drinking Yakult [wikipedia.org] since ever, and this kind of yogurt was (and I quote) "invented by Kyoto University pediatrics doctor Minoru Shirota in 1930". Here in Europe there is the Danone's Actimel [actimel.com], that is basically the same (I tasted both, I know) but with a new brand and a massive advertisement.

I'm mentioning that because IMHO this article is nothing but advertisement, passing something as a technological evolution but in fact, unless 30s technology counts as one, its nothing but another way slashdot got to sell your eyeballs.

Lactobacillus bulgaricus

Bulgarians consider their country as the original inventor and genuine producer of sour milk, which is called "yogurt" in English. I dunno if that is true or not but in my humble experience, Bulgarian genuine yogurt is much tastier than any alternative I have tasted; those include several North American brands of yogurt that I tried in Canada and a brand of Greek yogurt sold in Canadian Oriental food stores.

Saying that yogurt has live bacteria in it is like saying water has H_2 O molecules: of course it does! Here is a wiki link [wikipedia.org] that describes pretty accurately, to the best of my knowledge, the bacteria species that makes yogurt out of fresh milk.

Dannon's products should be avoided. The worst brand-name yogurt in Bulgaria is theirs. It has the most artificial taste of all the surrogates that are sold as yogurt. If you have tasted the real thing, you will recognise their product as junk food (as long as you are not a junk-food addict :-) ).

Want bacteria with that?

Probiotics in food are part of a larger trend toward 'functional foods,' which stress their ability to deliver benefits that have traditionally been the realm of medicine or dietary supplements.

And so slouches the Baby Boom generation toward their inevitable mortality, scrambling and clutching madly at every huckster's promise to improve "health" and "longevity." This is a minor example of the sort, of course, but it is just as well documented and proven as the others. Which is to say, not.
 
The primary "benefit" delivered by Activa is indeed that of the dietary supplements (and not a few medicines), which is to separate the victim from their available cash and deliver fuzzy science and placebo effect in return.
 
There is limited data that active culture supplementation can reduce diarrhea duration in acute gastroenteritis, although the studies are small. The effect in irritable bowel syndrome is contentious, but then virtually everything in irritable bowel syndrome is contentious, including the existence of the syndrome as such. In already-healthy people, Activa has no well-supported benefit of which I am aware.
 
For myself (and as a practicing physician), I don't have a problem with it - if you like your flavored spoiled milk with extra bacteria, by all means, partake. Nearly all food is nonsterile. Much of it has quite a lot of bacteria, and most of them (Taco Bell notwithstanding) are relatively harmless. Personally, I rather prefer Pop-Tarts.

Re:Want bacteria with that?

As a practicing physician you should know better. 90% of the 'food' on the shelfs of your local grocer is equivalent to cardboard when it comes to nutritional value. It's all been injected with just enough vitamin content to be called a food when really it's nothing but sugars and starches and a little bit of cotton seed oil (which is toxic if unprocessed) to hold it all together. Perfect example is Pop-Tarts. You'd die of a wide variety of vitamin deficiencies if all you eat are Pop-Tarts... which is how a lot of kids live, on the edge of vitamin deficiency, and we wonder why they have difficulty paying attention in class or why they come down with so many auto-immune syndromes.

It's 'professionals' like you who lead the american citizens into seriously unhealthy lifestyles. Oh well, guess a guy's got to make a living and what would physicians do if everyone were naturally healthy?

Quackery

Here's a link to the AFFSA (the French FDA) report [afssa.fr] [PDF warning][French warning :-)] on the Lactobacillus Casei yoghurt. They found all of the manufacturer's claims "unverifiable" or "unsupported", except one, which they advised on changing to: "takes part in the process of reinforcing natural defenses".

we used bacteria to preserve food for generations

Sterile food is a 20th century historical curiosity, and look at how chronic disease has taken off. Antibiotics may have diminished the danger of a bacterial infections, but new health syndromes have risen with a vengeance (cancer, heart disease, IBS, tooth decay, etc).

Lots of traditional foods were fermented. Nourishing Traditions [newtrendspublishing.com] (best cookbook evar!) has a couple chapters on using lacto-bacteria to predigest and preserve foods - cultured dairy products, fermented fruits & vegetables (chutney, Sauerkraut, pickled vegetables, etc), lacto-fermented beverages (made some "grape cooler" last fall - Mmmm.... ), etc.

It may seem strange to us that, in earlier times, people knew how to preserve vegetables for long periods without the use of freezers or canning machines. This was done through the process of lacto-fermentation. Lactic acid is a natural preservative that inhibits putrefying bacteria. Starches and sugars in vegetables and fruits are converted into lactic acid by the many species of lactic-acid-producing bacteria. These lactobacilli are ubiquitous, present on the surface of all living things and especially numerous on leaves and roots of plants growing in or near the ground. Man needs only to learn the techniques for controlling and encouraging their proliferation to put them to his own use, just as he has learned to put certain yeasts to use in converting the sugars in grape juice to alcohol in wine.

The ancient Greeks understood that important chemical changes took place during this type of fermentation. Their name for this change was "alchemy." Like the fermentation of dairy products, preservation of vegetables and fruits by the process of lacto-fermentation has numerous advantages beyond those of simple preservation. The proliferation of lactobacilli in fermented vegetables enhances their digestibility and increases vitamin levels.These beneficial organisms produce numerous helpful enzymes as well as antibiotic and anticarcinogenic substances. Their main by-product, lactic acid, not only keeps vegetables and fruits in a state of perfect preservation but also promotes the growth of healthy flora throughout the intestine. Other alchemical by-products include hydrogen peroxide and small amounts of benzoic acid.

-Nourishing Traditions, pg. 89

One insight that I think is particularly useful is how the book says that grains/nuts/beans/legumes should be soaked in water (depending on what's being soaked, with salt/whey/lemon juice) to de-activate enzyme-inhibitors. This makes said grains/nuts/beans/legumes easier to digest, which might be important for you Irritable Bowel Syndrome sufferers... If I'm making pancakes, I take my freshly ground whole wheat flour and mix in the raw milk and a little probiotics the night before. Leave it out on the counter overnight, and by morning all those nasty enzyme inhibitors have broken down.

Sample chapters at the page linked above. Check it out. More info if desired...

patents on life.

I tried the Activa yogurt and it didn't do anything to my digestive tract that regular yogurt doesn't already help with (I get the IBS pretty often).

I think the 'bifidus digestivus' and 'bifidus regularus' bacteria are a bunch of marketing bullshit. As noted by previous posters, they basically took some Bulgarian bacteria, renamed and trademarked it, and marketed it.

I do believe in the benefits of probiotics, although I think they are pretty low unless your body is under specific conditions that might kill all or most of the flora in your intestine. Like if you took antibiotics. Intestinal bacteria are very important, and you gotta replace it somehow if it dies off. In fact, some doctors are seriously suggesting that shit is an organ, just like your lungs and heart and whatnot. They think it is necessary for human life and if your intestinal flora is damaged, in some cases they are seriously suggesting poop transplants [washingtonpost.com]. Seriously, some doctors are cramming other peopless shit into their patient's colons.

So I did some poking around and i found that the Stonyfield Organic Yogurt is the best. It has 1-3 grams of fiber (depending on the flavor) in the form of inulin, which helps your body ingest the calcium. It also has 6 live cultures, which is the most of any yogurt I've seen. Combine that with the fact that it is organic, so won't be filled with hormones and (ironically) antibiotics, and a great taste (particularly the chocolate) and its a damn healthy snack.

Re:Testing

It's food, not a drug, so it doesn't require testing anymore than prunes would do if marketed as a cure for constipation (which they're rather good at!) From TFA

The Food and Drug Administration takes a neutral position, policing food packages to make sure that companies do not try to equate probiotic products with disease-curing drugs (unless they have scientific evidence to back up a claim). One scholarly group that has addressed the topic recently, the American Academy of Microbiology, said in a 2006 report that "at present, the quality of probiotics available to consumers in food products around the world is unreliable."

Re:

Yes, they are common bacteria, known to be not harmful. Also, you eat lots of bacteria in many other foods anyway.

Keep in mind that there are a huge number of bacteria living in you and on you, most of them completely uncharacterized, and many of them pro

Re:Testing

Jesus Christ, are we really that disconnected from our food these days?

Dude, bacteria is what yogurt is. It's milk, spoiled under controled conditions. Conditions that promote the growth of . . .bacteria.

For the past few decades commercial yogurt has been pastuerized, i.e, put under controlled conditions that kill bacteria. Don't do that and your yogurt remains live. That's all there is to it.

KFG

Re:Testing

IIRC - the bacteria is not common for the US. In fact it is uncommon for most of EU.

It is Lactobacillum Bulgaricum and relatives which are originally from the Balkan peninsula (you can guess from the name). Even now in the remote mountain areas of Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Greece and South Eastern Serbia if you leave milk outside it has a very fair chance of becoming a proper yogurt naturally. This does not happen every time though and that is the reason why people add some of the old yogurt in the new milk to start the fermentation. The difference between Lactobacillum produced yogurt and other yogurts is that lactobacillum can ferment even buffalo milk to yogurt without starting to produce nasty ketones and the smelly stuff we usually associate with bad milk. In addition to that once the fermentation has taken place the product is surprisingly stable and can survive up to several weeks in the fridge without any extra preservatives. For reasons not completely understood even today outside its native region native Lactobacillum does not last long so any place using it has to refresh its stocks regularly from the Balkans.

Danone got their hands on Lactobacillum and started producing decent yogurt after buying the biggest Bulgarian dairy food producer Serdika in the 90-es. Before that their yogurt had the taste of condensed rancid piss fortified with non-sour cream (same as the yogurt still made by most other manufacturers nowdays). Now it is more or less edible. It is not anywhere close to the real stuff which you can get in the Bulgarian, Greek or Macedonian mountains (I sometimes feel like killing someone for a jug of buffalo yogurt), but it can actually be eaten.

Re:Testing

The sugar in milk is lactose and it is found only in the milk of mammals.

Mammal milk you say? As opposed to what, bird milk?

Re:Mmmmm bugs

I love that sensation of the probiotics crawling down my throat!

If I only I could get my wife to say the same thing.

Re:

I can get your wife to say it.

Fat free !

I'm surprised no-one ever went so far as labelling water as fat-free.

Haven't you seen fet-free cooking oil spray ? It's main ingredient is canola oil, but it's fat free because each 0.5 gram serving contains zero grams of fat (rounded down).

Re:Let's not make this a "craze" for marketing's s

Too late, there has been an explosion in probiotic products in the UK. My favourite advert is for Danone Activia.

They say in the advert that they have it to a group of women and asked them how they felt afterwards. Of course most of them described some kin

Re:

Do you know what food marketing fad I hate at the moment? All this organic nonsense that is being sold in the UK.

Organic potatoes, apples, milk... I thought these were organic products by definition, along with beef, chicken and orange juice. Maybe I'm w

Re:Let's not make this a "craze" for marketing's s

Actually, has anyone seen my organic </b>?

Re:I hate to break it to you all, but...

Or maybe we should just realise that we're designed to cope with a bit of bacteria and get away from this antibacterial over clean lifestyle we live before we destroy our immune systems forever.

I saw a product on TV advertised earlier today: Vicks First Defense. It's an anti bacterial hand spray you can use after you've shook hands with someone or pressed a button in a left/elevator etc. I've been doing those things for years, and the worst I've had a little cold.

I'm not saying don't wash your hands after using the toilet and don't take precautions with food, I'm just worried we're going too far. If we don't use our immune systems they'll become weak, and we'll be wiped out by some bug in the next century or so.

Come on people, we surivived for years without all this over-sanitisation, I'm sure we can survive a few colds and a bit of stomach flu!

Re:I hate to break it to you all, but...

In fact the over-sterilisation of our environment has been linked with the rise in immune disorders such as asthma.

I was always tought that it's good to let children get covered in mud occasionally so their immune systems get a good workout - and this was years ago. Seems that this advice is becoming accepted again.