Home > Healthy Eating > Archives > 2007 > October > 26
Friday, October 26, 2007
What’s really in yogurt?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Yogurts and other fermented dairy products including yogurt drinks loudly tout health benefits associated with their “probiotic” ingredients. Probiotics refer to a variety of “friendly bacteria” that boost digestive health and in so doing aid in overall health including supporting a healthy immune system. But, how do you know if there’s enough “probiotic power” in a carton of yogurt? It’s not like measuring the grams of fiber or number of calories in a food. In fact, nutritionists point to documented failures of products to meet label claims with regard to numbers and types of viable microbes present in the product. There’s debate over how many must be consumed for a health benefit and some nutritionists suggest that there is a problem in the probiotic industry with regard to accurate labeling. Add to that…there is neither a legally recognized definition of, nor a standard of identity for, the term “probiotic” in the United States or worldwide, so products containing this label, therefore, currently are not obligated to meet any standards unique to probiotics.
Some suggest that manufacturers label the genus, species, and strain for each probiotic in a product, along with the viable cells of each probiotic strain that will remain up to the end of shelf life. Meanwhile, some manufacturers resist this approach, claiming it confuses consumers.
Got probiotic bacteria? It’s hard to know how much right now.
