Dairy researchers are developing a range of products they say can improve health and prevent disease by using bacteria to boost the digestive tract.
Clinical studies have found that live lactic acid bacteria, called probiotics, travel through the digestive system and cure stomach problems while promoting beneficial bacteria.
The Dairy Board's consumer
brands company, New Zealand Milk, is conducting trials in Wellington and Palmerston North that use one strain of the bacteria - with the research label DR10 - to boost the immune systems of children.
It apparently works not only to stop gut problems, but to ward off coughs, colds and other respiratory illnesses.
The bacterium was shown to boost the immunity of adults in a study in Taiwan.
New Zealand Milk researchers spent five years looking at hundreds of strains of probiotic bacteria and isolated two: DR10 and DR20.
Two milk powders containing DR10 are being marketed in Taiwan as Fernleaf 1-3 and Fernleaf 3-8, and a DR20 cheese called Inner Balance Mainland has been launched in Australia.
The board is after a slice of the global market for "functional foods," which was estimated to have been worth about $US12 billion ($29 billion) last year and is growing about 25 to 35 per cent a year.
Scientists believe the bacteria may also help reduce the risk of contracting colon cancer.
Adding strains of the bacteria to yoghurt-type products such as dairy drinks has been part of an international trend to "functional foods" intended to restore a consumer's gut ravaged by poor diet, consumption of alcohol, antibiotics and stress.
But research has now shown that the same probiotics being used in yoghurts and whey-based drinks can also be applied as coatings for snack bars, drinks, and powders to sprinkle on breakfast cereal, or used in ice-cream.
- NZPA
