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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.""
that would be kombucha tea.
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.
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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.
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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 probably essential for your health and well being.
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.
Jesus Christ, are we really that disconnected from our food these days?
.bacteria.
Dude, bacteria is what yogurt is. It's milk, spoiled under controled conditions. Conditions that promote the growth of . .
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
Brazilian people (and people from other countries) have been drinking Yakult 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, 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.
Organic potatoes, apples, milk... I thought these were organic products by definition, along with beef, chicken and orange juice. Maybe I'm wrong and they're made in a lab from nylon and plastic... I'm sure it is better for us that they're not covered in quite as many pesticides but quite a few dangerous chemicals are allowed to be used and the product called organic so it's all marketing ****shit. And the stuff is about twice the price...
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
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.
Oddly enough I happened to check the ingredients on the side of a container of Activa yoghurt and in Canada, the particular strain of probiotic bacteria has a DIN (Drug Identification Number) beside it. Due to my strobe light attention span, I didn't check it out on the Drug Product Database, but I figured it should be mentioned here. I'll probably go and follow up on that at lunch. Hey, pretty lights! (*wanders away aimlessly*)
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.
Perhaps you should shut your yapping and do some reading.
The Soil Association.
Organic standards are the rules and regulations that define how an organic product must be made. Organic standards are laid down in European Union (EU) law. Anything labelled 'organic' that is for human consumption must meet these standards as a minimum. The standards cover all aspects of food production, for example, animal welfare and wildlife conservation, and banning unnecessary and harmful food additives in organic processed foods.
Organic farming and processing are legally defined. Any product sold as organic must comply with strict rules set at UK, European and international levels. These rules ensure that consumers can be certain that they are buying a genuine organic product. Imported organic foods must have been produced and inspected to equivalent standards. There must also be full traceabiliy of organic ingredients back to the farmer.
There a number of different certification bodies in the UK, which carry out the inspections and paperwork to ensure that the standards are being met. Soil Association Certification Limited (SA Certification) is one of only a very few of these bodies that have chosen to set standards higher than the EU minimum in areas of animal welfare and nature conservation.
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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.
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...
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Lots of traditional foods were fermented. Nourishing Traditions (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.
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...
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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. 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.
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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.
--Obyron
Bullshit. We are designed to eat whatever food we can get. We didn't make it thousands of years by eating soybeans. If you've ever taken an anthropology class, it's pretty clear that meat has been part of our diet from day one. Community, migration patterns, and technology were all driven, in large part, by our quest for meat... precisely because we can't chase down and eat animals barehanded. Our nature was to develop tools to help feed us. The vegan propaganda machine would like to remind you that all nature is beautiful, except our own. Killing and eating animals is one of the most "normal" things we do. The milk argument might have some merit, but again, we are designed to be omnivores, to survive. You can argue against industrial farming, slaughterhouse conditions, bioengineering, etc... but the notion that we aren't meant to eat meat is so far from true that it borders on the hilarious.
In addition to that excellent explanation, I would like to add that making yogurt at home is very simple. Here is a site that gives the details: http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/Cheese/yogurt _making/YOGURT2000.htm. Here is another informative article: http://homecooking.about.com/library/archive/bldai ry9.htm
I would bet that the "cheese" most Americans are familiar with is American cheese (or the even viler Velveeta-style 'Pasteurized Processed American Cheese Food'.
But Cheddar is certainly not the only kind of nonpasteurized cheese available in America.
Oh, it definitely makes a difference. For me, not a good one either. I've had IBS for a while now (something a 26 yr old really shouldn't have.) I eat Columbo yogurts, mostly 'cause I like 'em and they're good protein/calcium and easy on my stomach.
I tried Activia for a week instead of the Columbo, and all I could think of were the commercials for "foaming pipe snake" drain cleaner/clog remover. Because there was some definite foaming and snake like action coming from my rear end for 3 days afterwords.
I'm not going to eat it again, unless the Fleet enema is the only other alternative.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
You are right that most yogurt packaged in a small cup with fruit flavors are diluted. However, supermarkets also carry "plain" yogurt in a pint sized container. It's mostly solid, have strong odor, and is very sour.
I once had a signature.