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Functional Products

Functional food is any fresh or processed food claimed to have a health-promoting or disease-preventing property beyond the basic function of supplying nutrients. The general category of functional foods includes processed or foods fortified with health-promoting additives, like vitamins, fibers, plant extract, antioxidants, etc. Fermented foods with live cultures are considered as functional foods with probiotic benefits. In fact, probiotics have been used for decades in fermented dairy products. The emergence of clinical evidence for benefits to consumers, and the related marketing power, induced companies worldwide to pay particular attention to this fastest growing category of functional food ingredients. Producers are currently investigating the possibility to add living microbes to a broad spectrum of foods and beverages. Anyway, food technologist have to face the challenge to keep microbes alive during food production and storage, since immuno-modulatory properties seem often associated with live bacterial cells. When probiotics are incorporated into food, some aspects have to be taken into account:

  • selection of probiotic strain/s genetically and metabolically compatible with its final application;
  • use of production conditions and ingredients that do not affect bacterial viability
  • use of food ingredients able to support bacterial growth if a fermented food is produced
  • selection of packaging materials and storage conditions in order to prevent probiotics damage during storage
  • make the presence of living bacterial cells comptible with the expected taste and texture of the final product.
Functional Product

AAT supports functional food and food supplement producers by:

  • evaluating the quality of their functional products by applying traditional cultural methos as well as molecular biology tools (bacterial survival in different environmental conditions, proper taxonomic identification, traceability of single proprietary strains in food and environmental samples, etc)
  • studying growth requirements of living probiotics in batch and lab-scale fermentation trials, by using chemically defined media, semi- and synthetic media and/or industrial ingredients. Several parameters, affecting bacterial growth and metabolism, can be monitored along the fermentation process;
  • evaluating the ability of metabolites, produced by probiotics and starter bacteria, to preserve foods from moulds development and delaying bacterial contaminations;
  • selecting potential probiotic strains for their ability to survive in specific food matrix, such as dairy ingredients, cereals, vegetables, fruit juices, etc.
  • comparing the effect of different formulations on probiotic viability and survival along the human gastro-intestinal tract.

For more info please address to the following publications:

  • Coppa GV, Bruni S, Morelli L, Soldi S, Gabrielli O. (2004) The first prebiotics in humans: human milk oligosaccharides.. J Clin Gastroenterol. 38(6 Suppl):S80-3. Review.
  • Marina Elli, Maria Luisa Callegari, Susanna Ferrari, Elena Bessi, Daniela Cattivelli, Sara Soldi, Lorenzo Morelli, Nathalie Goupil Feuillerat, and Jean-Michel Antoine (2006) Survival of yoghurt bacteria in the human gut. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 72(7): 5113-5117.
  • Marina Elli, Daniela Cattivelli, Sara Soldi, Marzia Bonatti, Lorenzo Morelli (2008) In vitro and in vivo evaluation of the bifidogenic potential of refined psyllium (Plantago ovata) seed husk. Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology 42(3): S174-S176.

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