Probiotics are not only useless but also harmful to health.

Rumors:

Two top international journals published research articles on probiotics and health, and some media pointed out that "probiotics are not only useless, but also harmful to health" when quoting these two research articles. This report caused confusion and panic among consumers. Is probiotics really useless?

It has been more than 100 years since humans discovered and consumed probiotics. A large number of scientific studies show that probiotics play a role by regulating intestinal flora and its metabolism or directly acting on host cells. It should be noted that not every probiotic has all functions, and different strains have different functions. Two misquoted studies on probiotics published in Cell magazine also suggest that probiotics should be tailored to each person's characteristics and special needs, and should not be considered as a necessary supplement to the body, let alone completely deny probiotics. In addition, it is unknown whether the so-called probiotics used in this paper meet the requirements of the definition of probiotics, and the previous research data of so-called probiotics can not be found, so it is impossible to judge whether they are probiotics.

At present, many probiotics have been used in health food and medicine. Consumers can read the product labels or instructions to understand its function or efficacy, and choose the products that suit them. For ordinary liquid (wet) foods that claim to contain active probiotics, the following two points should be paid attention to when purchasing:

The first is the shelf temperature condition. In order to keep the probiotics alive, live bacteria products should be put in the freezer (4 ~ 8℃).

The second is the number of live bacteria. The national standard stipulates that the number of viable bacteria per gram or per milliliter should be greater than 654.38+0 million. Products marked with how many live bacteria are added but put on shelves at room temperature are often pasteurized, and the added probiotics have been inactivated, and their probiotic function is not as good as that of live bacteria products.

For ordinary solid foods that claim to contain active probiotics, such as probiotic solid drinks, it mainly depends on the characteristics of the strains (whether the strains have been verified by clinical research) and the number of live bacteria. Usually, the number of live bacteria per package is more than 65.438+000 billion, and 654.38+0 ~ 2 packages can be eaten every day. Although the storage temperature is not as sensitive as liquid (wet) probiotic products, it is not suitable for long-term storage in high temperature environment, and it is generally suitable to store below 20℃.

Rumor experts: He Guoqing, vice chairman of Probiotics Branch of China Institute of Food Science and Technology, and professor of biosystems engineering College of Food Science and Technology of Zhejiang University.

Expert: Zhang Heping, director and professor of the Key Laboratory of Dairy Biotechnology and Engineering of the Ministry of Education of Inner Mongolia Agricultural University.

The manuscript was provided by China Institute of Food Science and Technology.