Food Products Articles

Probiotics - the benefits of lactic acid bacteria

Carmen Marrano of Common Health Products (05/09/2008)

In our business we get a lot of questions about the benefits of eating cultured vegetables. The answer has to do with helpful bacteria and the choices made about which strains to use.

The questions we tend to get go something like this:

I’ve been told that people have been eating cultured vegetables for years for their many health benefits and their taste. What is it about good raw cultured vegetables that could make them superior to a homemade product, and what should I look for?

The starter culture is the key. A good starter culture is a mix of specific strains of compatible lactic acid bacteria that create a highly-responsive and stable fermentation that help create a superior product in days rather than weeks. This faster process produces raw cultured vegetables with a more stable shelf life, exceptional nutritional quality and a sweeter taste than homemade or packaged vegetables prepared with poorer cultures.

This process can be enhanced if the vegetables are then vacuum-packed, because the lactic bacteria culture present is a micro-system. All micro-systems reach a certain level of population equilibrium, and if done properly the packer can maximize the number of lactic acid bacteria present (to never more than 100 million bacteria per gram). That’s more lactic acid bacteria than is present in homemade and most packaged products. You would need to eat almost two and a half pounds of yogurt to get roughly the same amount of lactic acid bacteria you can get in three and a half ounces of well-prepared raw cultured vegetables.

You can see why the choice of which lactic acid bacteria strains to use is so important. In our own business we had to choose from over thirty pure and mixed cultures based on their fermentation profiles and biocompatibility, and we are continually adding more. There is tremendous potential across a wide range of applications for lactic acid fermentation technology, allowing the creation of “designer starters” for many purposes.

The choice in strains determines the effectiveness of the starter. For example, one special Leuconostoc strain produces a sweetness that alleviates the sour taste of fermented vegetables by converting fructose into mannitol. This is very interesting, because the same amount of sugar is present but because of the change in pH (to a lower pH) the remaining sugar is not available for the yeast. In this way, the process of yeast fermentation is inhibited.

This is positive because secondary yeast fermentation is a problem. It results in the production of CO2, which causes bloating in bags, the popping of lids and even breakage in bottles!

In terms of our diets, regular intake of foods high in lactic acid bacteria is important. It’s not the strain of bacteria that determines its effectiveness in the body, but rather the general group of bacteria. Lactic acid bacteria (the category of “good” bacteria) produce lactic acid, acetic acid, hydrogen peroxide and other organic acids. They reduce pH and help to eliminate pathogens. All of these interactions result in a positive and healthful effect on our bodies. Bacteria, both good and bad, colonize the intestine. With daily intake of lactic acid bacteria, we ensure that good bacteria maintain an edge.