Coffee brews as food matrices for delivering probiotics: Opportunities, challenges, and potential health benefits

What are the main obstacles to turning foods healthier through probiotics incorporation? a review of functionalization of foods by probiotics and bioactive metabolites

Functional foods are gaining significant attention from people all over the world. When added to foods, probiotic bacteria can turn them healthier and confer beneficial health effects, such as improving the immune system and preventing cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. However, adding probiotics to foods is a challenging task. The processing steps often involve high temperatures, and intrinsic food factors, such as pH, water activity, dissolved oxygen, post-acidification, packaging, and cold storage temperatures, can stress the probiotic strain and impact its viability. Moreover, it is crucial to consider these factors during food product development to ensure the effectiveness of the probiotic strain. Among others, techniques such as microencapsulation and lyophilization, have been highlighted as industrial food functionalization strategies. In this review, we present and discuss alternatives that may be used to functionalize foods by incorporating probiotics and/or delivering bioactive compounds produced by probiotics. We also emphasize the main challenges in different food products and the technological characteristics influencing them. The knowledge available here may contribute to overcoming the practical obstacles to food functionalization with probiotics.

W D, U. M K, S.D K. Bacillus Coagulans and its Spore as Potential Probiotics in the Production of Novel Shelf- Stable Foods

The synbiotic foods with therapeutic activities have been beneficial to gut health and immunity development, including Bacillus coagulans as the probiotic microorganism. It is preferred over other lactic acid bacteria (LAB) as it can produce spores. It is grown in the pH range of 5.5 to 6.2 and releases spores at 37 °C. These microbial spores can withstand environments with high temperatures, acidic conditions, and salinity, making it a viable probiotic organism for production of novel shelf-stable foods. It has become an essential ingredient in the functional food industry due to its probiotic characteristics and great resistance to stressful conditions. For extensive commercial use and a wide range of food applications, apart from probiotic characteristics, a probiotic organism must be cost-effective, convenient and remain viable throughout the processing, storage and consumption. The non-spore- forming lactic acid bacteria can be utilized to make probiotic products and fermented dairy products under controlled processing and storage conditions. The spore- forming probiotic organism can be delivered into the human gut through novel food products derived from cereals, legumes, fruits and vegetables, confectionery products, and meat and non-dairy products. This has led to the development of convenient and shelf-stable non-dairy probiotics. These non-dairy-based probiotics are cheaper, resilient against various processing conditions, high in bioactive components, and can mitigate the risk of lifestyle diseases and reduce. Further, lactose intolerance is associated with the consumption of dairy probiotics. Therefore, this review aimed to assess the utilization of probiotic Bacillus coagulans spores in emerging shelf-stable novel non-dairy products with probiotic potential.