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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.""
Activia, a line of yogurt with special live bacteria that are marketed as aiding regularity
Taco Bell should sue them for patent infringement.
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...
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
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.
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.
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I love that sensation of the probiotics crawling down my throat!
If I only I could get my wife to say the same thing.
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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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That Activia stuff seems to help with irritable bowel syndrome (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.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
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?
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
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.
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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!
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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.
I can get your wife to say it.
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 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 :-) ).
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.
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Actually, has anyone seen my organic ?
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
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*)
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.
The bacteria they add are normally found in traditional yogurt. These newer yogurts are just reintroducing some of formally common lactose digesting bacteria that are believed to be beneficial to humans. The sugar in milk is lactose and it is found only in the milk of mammals. As a result, the only bacteria that can digest lactose are found in the digestive systems of mammals, specifically breast feeding 'younglings' and milk drinking humans. Yogurt is made when these bacteria are allowed to feed off of the lactose in milk, which results in the creation of lactic acid. Lactic acid gives yogurt it's tart taste and prevents the growth of other BAD bacteria. In old-world yogurt, there are a bunch of different bacteria that can be found in yogurt, many with beneficial qualities for our health. In industrial yogurt production the process is controlled and limited to only two specific bacteria that are only prized for the ability to produce yogurt very quickly. Yogurt is historically a middle eastern food, b/c the preservative power of the lactic acid would help keep the yogurt safe to consume for some time. In northern Europe people developed the ability to digest lactose into adulthood, an ability that most people and other mammals do not have. There was an article on /. a few weeks ago about this same ability having been found to have developed in a tribe in Africa just in the past few thousand years.
I highly recomend the book "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen". In fact, on Amazon, they show the section about Milk and human history in the excerpts. It is really pretty fascinating information regarding this subject.
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Here's a link to the AFFSA (the French FDA) report [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".
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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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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?
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
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.
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 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?
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