Supplements & functional ingredients
from the statistics. According to work by Grand View Research, the global probiotics market is already worth around $58bn and is expected to enjoy a CAGR of 7.5% until the end of this decade. That buoyancy is shadowed by the figures in particular markets: five million Americans took probiotics in 2019, a figure bound to increase in the wake of Covid-19. Past the raw numbers, indeed, probiotics are everywhere, from healthcare websites to the press, from the Guardian to Oprah. Despite this wild popularity, however, challenges remain. Though their efficacy has sometimes been proven in scientific settings, the probiotic pills that many consumers take are on wobblier ground. That speaks to wider problems. Imagining probiotics as a kind of silver bullet, some people risk ignoring the broader life decisions that can lead to a happy gut, from diet to exercise. Not that the situation is hopeless. From stricter regulations to closer consultation with doctors, probiotic enthusiasts may yet develop a system that keeps them genuinely healthy. Given all the potential benefits of probiotics, that’s undoubtedly good news.
Listen to your gut It’s hard to overstate the popularity of probiotics across today’s West. That’s long been true of the US, but other countries have recently begun down the same path. In 2020, to take one example, Italy witnessed an 188% increase in probiotics users. At the same time, developing countries are quickly catching up. As so often in the supplements space, China is a major area of growth, with the People’s Republic registering a 108% increase in probiotic users in May 2020 compared with the previous six months. To fill this rise in demand, meanwhile, manufacturers have rushed to adopt. China is once again a leader here, with the government recently approving three new probiotics strains as novel food ingredients.
For Dr Alexandra Shustina, all this frantic activity can be understood in a number of ways. Perhaps most obvious, she argues, are the benefits probiotics offer the body. Typically found in the lower intestine, these bacteria, which in truth also encompass a range of fungi and viruses, can produce a range of “medically studied benefits”. And as Shustina, founder of Whole Gut Health, explains, this is clear across a range of health areas. “That’s in terms of different kinds of diarrheal illnesses, whether it’s infectious diarrhoea or irritable bowel syndrome,” she says. “There’s also been some pretty decent data to show that it’s helpful in specific situations too: ulcerative colitis, which is a chronic inflammatory disease of the colon, and Crohn’s disease.”
Ingredients Insight /
www.ingredients-insight.com
Fermentation nation Shustina’s focus on the bowel and intestines makes sense. Helping to restore the natural bacterial balance in the gut – which can be disrupted by poor diets and antibiotics – probiotics keep harmful germs at bay. Apart from their value below the stomach, moreover, researchers have found probiotics could be useful across a number of other health areas. From mental health conditions like anxiety to keeping heart-busting cholesterol low, probiotics have long been fated as a kind of miracle.
One way to dovetail probiotics is to consume healthy bacteria through a balanced diet, notably fermented foods like sauerkraut or kimchi.
“The microbiome is a very complex thing. That means a probiotic is, in some ways, just a drop in the bucket compared to what the microbiome really is.”
And, in fact, Shustina argues this fact goes a long way towards explaining their popularity. At a time where wellness is a $1.5trn industry, according to McKinsey and Company, and where consumers are empowered to understand their bodies in all their bewildering complexity, Shustina says that people want to get “the root cause of their health under control”. Yet if probiotics can certainly do plenty of good, evidence for them as a cure-all is less convincing. In large part, this is a question of research. While scientists have shown probiotics can effectively battle a number of specific gastrointestinal illnesses, any benefits in people who are already healthy are far from clear. This is reflected in the way that probiotics are marketed. Because they’re not defined as a regulatory product by the FDA, it can sometimes be hard for consumers to understand exactly what probiotics can do or what they contain, not least when packaging
$58bn
The amount the global probiotics market is worth and is expected to enjoy a CAGR of 7.5% until the end of the decade.
Grand View Research 31
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Shutterstock.com
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