Recent trends in the probiotic and prebiotic functional food product development

In the recent past functional food product development in the world food market has significantly increased. It is estimated that the functional food market world wide will reach several hundred billion dollars in the near future. Functional foods provide health benefits to humans in addition to the nutritional benefits. Of all the recent functional food products, probiotics and prebiotics incorporated food products have assumed a significant market share worldwide particularly in Europe, Asia (Japan), Australia and recently in the US. Probiotics includes beneficial bacteria that enhance gut-health by their selective action on harmful microorganism in the gut in contrast to the action of antibiotics. Continued ingestion of probiotic bacteria has been shown to improve gut-health, prevent certain modern-day life style diseases, and show immuno-stimulatory activity. Prebiotics are essentially complex carbohydrates that are resistant to human digestive enzymes and pass to colonic regions undigested and provide nutrients for the colonic commensal bacteria. Thus the probiotic approach and the prebiotic approach through development of functional foods are fundamentally different, though both contribute to overall enhancement of gut health. Recently, a combination of both approaches, ie a synbiotic (probiotic and prebiotic) approach has been promoted and a number of synbiotic products are being developed for functional food markets. This chapter will focus on the science of probiotics and prebiotics, gastrointestinal microbiota, applications in probiotic and prebiotic foods including some examples. The science aspect of the probiotics includes introducing probiotics, their health benefits, commercial probiotic strains and their efficacy, challenges in incorporating probiotics into foods, and factors affecting viability and survival of the probiotic bacteria and techniques such as microencapsulation to improve their viability in products and in the gut. The science aspect of probiotics includes introducing concept of prebiotics, how it is different to probiotic approach, type of prebiotics utilized commercially, and health-related benefits and claims. The chapter also discuss the synbiotic approach and future issues in the development of functional foods