A Study on Suitable Non Dairy Food Matrix for Probiotic Bacteria - A Systematic Review

Abstract

Fermentation by probiotic lactic acid bacteria makes food beneficial to the gut and has thepotential to be therapeutic. Most probiotic products in the market are dairy based even asthere is a growing demand for vegan probiotic foods. Though many studies on plant foods as a medium for probiotics havebeen carried out, only a few have been successful. Hence a systematic review of plant based probiotic products was conducted to identify the most suitable and acceptable plant foods medium for probiotic bacteria. For this, studies published and indexed in Google scholar between2002-2017 were manually searched and analyzed. The study includes substrates from different food groups and combinations: cereals (22%), pulses (3%), cereal-pulse mix (5%), vegetables (19%), fruits (32%), combination (16%) and unconventional foods (3%). Soymilk was found to be the most promising among pulse-based substrates. The shelf life and viability of probiotics varied from 7 days to 4 weeks based on the initial count, temperature, time, strain of bacteria and substrate. Though a majority of the studies were carried out with fruit substrates, good probiotic count, improvements in nutritional properties, better acceptability and quicker fermentation time was found incereal based products. Hence, it is concluded that cereal based products is more suitable for the production of non-dairy probiotic products.

Encapsulated Food Products as a Strategy to Strengthen Immunity Against COVID-19

“…(120)(121)(122) are the most commonly used probiotics in functional and other fermented foods (162). Thus, there is increasing interest in the development of fruit-juice-based probiotic products (186,187). Fresh fruits and vegetables are known to be healthy matrices that may be suitable substrates for probiotics because of their antioxidants, fibers, minerals, and vitamins and their existence does not involve any dairy allergens which can prohibit their use by unique segments of the population (188).…”