Everyone must have drunk drinks containing probiotics, such as X Quan, X Le Duo, X Yitian and so on. On the packaging, it will also emphasize the words containing 10 billion lactic acid bacteria.
“10 billion lactic acid bacteria”! This sounds like a mighty reinforcement, and it will help us build a strong Great Wall of Health in no time.
Figure 丨 Tu Chong Creative
Yes, some of the claimed benefits of probiotic drinks are justified .
Probiotics represented by Lactobacillus , Bifidobacterium and Streptococcus can significantly improve the existing symptoms of constipation[1] and diarrhea[2] after entering the intestinal tract; long-term intake Adding probiotics can also relieve irritable bowel syndrome [3].
However, the premise of all this is that when the “10 billion lactic acid bacteria” reach your intestinal tract, there will still be enough surviving bacteria – because from the production to the final drink, the probiotics are dying all the way , reaching the intestinal tract At the time of Dao, it is hard to say that there are hundreds of millions or hundreds of millions.
Storage and transportation: hot and cold
Probiotics are also bacteria, which are also very, very sensitive to temperature, and they can live best at 4 to 8°C .
However, most beverages cannot be opened from the factory to allow consumers to drink fresh directly. Instead, they have to go through packaging, transportation, storage, and sales before reaching consumers’ mouths.
This means that the cold chain composed of refrigerated trucks, refrigerated warehouses, refrigerated cabinets and other facilities is very important for probiotic drinks; after you buy probiotic drinks home, it is also very important to put them in the refrigerator.
If there is a mistake in one of the above steps, resulting in the inactivation of the probiotics in the drink, then this bottle of probiotic drink will probably become a bottle of sugar water .
If the lactic acid bacteria beverage is not in the refrigerator, you should not buy it丨图虫创意
Wouldn’t it be easier to freeze the probiotic drink into ice cubes?
No, because the probiotics will freeze to death. During the freezing process, the cytoplasm with a high water content becomes larger, which will break the cell membrane of the probiotics, and the probiotics will die as a result. That way, instead of a probiotic popsicle, you get a sugar-water popsicle.
Drink into the stomach: all kinds of death
After storage and transportation, you drink the surviving probiotics, and the severe test begins again.
The first pass is the mouth .
Human saliva contains a small amount of lysozyme , which can kill some bacteria, whether you are a probiotic or not.
So if you want to drink, drink it quickly, don’t take a sip and smack the taste carefully.
Chewing carefully is the first step for the body to sterilize food丨giphy
The second pass is the stomach .
The main component of gastric acid is hydrochloric acid , and the pH value can even be as low as below 1, which is an out-and-out strong acid. Under normal circumstances, stomach acid kills most bacteria in food, but…it doesn’t distinguish between pathogenic bacteria and good bacteria.
Figure丨giphy
Even at the end of the intestinal tract, probiotics are hard to escape: on the one hand, the threat comes from bile , which can dissolve bacterial cell membranes; on the other hand, it is the “exclusion” of intestinal bacteria .
The number of casualties is too high
Even if the cold chain goes all the way to the mouth, the probiotics will eventually kill a lot, so is the probiotic drink a scam?
Not really.
Doing miracles vigorously, the sea of bacteria tactics also work here. Although probiotics have suffered heavy losses along the way, as long as the base is large enough, even if only 1% of them can reach the intestinal tract alive, the amount is quite considerable .
Therefore, a drink labeled “100 ml contains 100 million viable bacteria” (this is a lactic acid bacteria drink that meets the national minimum standard, and the unit of viable bacteria is CFU, or “colony forming unit” ), a bottle of hundreds of millions of viable bacteria when it leaves the factory, even if The remaining 1% is also at the million level-this is also beneficial to the intestinal health of most people .
What’s more, the live bacteria level of most probiotic drinks is much higher than “100 million per 100ml”.
Figure 丨 Tu Chong Creative
However, there are relatively stable probiotics in the intestines of healthy people .
Occasionally drink a bottle of probiotic drink to add a little bit, which is beneficial, but it is not obvious and not long-lasting (also pay attention to the whole cold chain, so as not to lose this health benefit);
If you drink it for a long time, firstly, your wallet can’t stand it, and secondly, your body can’t stand it—in order to cover up the strong sour taste brought by fermentation, a lot of sugar is added to probiotic drinks, and some drinks contain more sugar than cola of the same volume.
Guaranteeing the balance and health of the basic intestinal flora can also be achieved by a balanced diet.
People who really need to supplement probiotics are people with impaired intestinal flora. The probiotics they need are pharmaceutical preparations. They have to go to the hospital to prescribe them or go to the pharmacy to buy them. Drinking probiotic drinks alone cannot cure the disease at all. .
references
[1]Waller PA, Gopal PK, Leyer GJ, et al. Dose-response effect of Bifidobacterium lactis HN019 on whole gut transit time and functional gastrointestinal symptoms in adults. Scand J Gastroenterol. 2011;46(9):1057-1064.
[2]McFarland L V. Probiotics for the Primary and Secondary Prevention of C. difficile Infections: A Meta-analysis and Systematic Review. Antibiotics (Basel). 2015;4(2):160-178.
[3]Whorwell PJ, Altringer L, Morel J, et al. Efficacy of an encapsulated probiotic Bifidobacterium infantis 35624 in women with irritable bowel syndrome. Am J Gastroenterol. 2006;101(7):1581-1590.
[4] World Gastroenterology Organization. World Gastroenterology Organization Global Guidelines: Probiotics and prebiotics.
[5] Microecology Branch of Chinese Preventive Medicine Association. Expert consensus on clinical application of microecological regulators in China (2020 edition) [J]. Chinese Journal of Microecology, 2020, 32 (8): 953-965.
[6] Probiotics Branch of China Food Science and Technology Society. Scientific review of “dose-effect relationship” of probiotics [J]. Chinese Journal of Food Science, 2022,22(7):443-454.
Author: Li Meng
Editor: Li Xiaokui
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