A Study on Suitable Non Dairy Food Matrix for Probiotic Bacteria - A Systematic Review

Subhashree Sridharan^1* and Kavitha Muthunayakam Sudersana Das²

¹Department of Home Science, St.Teresa’s College, Ernakulam, Kerala, India.

²Govt. College for Women, University of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India.

³College of Applied Medical Sciences, King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, King Abdullah International Medical Research Centre, National Guard Health Affairs, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Corresponding Author Email: shree_subha29@yahoo.com

Fermentation by probiotic lactic acid bacteria makes food beneficial to the gut and has thepotential to be therapeutic. Most probiotic products in the market are dairy based even asthere is a growing demand for vegan probiotic foods. Though many studies on plant foods as a medium for probiotics havebeen carried out, only a few have been successful. Hence a systematic review of plant based probiotic products was conducted to identify the most suitable and acceptable plant foods medium for probiotic bacteria. For this, studies published and indexed in Google scholar between2002-2017 were manually searched and analyzed. The study includes substrates from different food groups and combinations: cereals (22%), pulses (3%), cereal-pulse mix (5%), vegetables (19%), fruits (32%), combination (16%) and unconventional foods (3%). Soymilk was found to be the most promising among pulse-based substrates. The shelf life and viability of probiotics varied from 7 days to 4 weeks based on the initial count, temperature, time, strain of bacteria and substrate. Though a majority of the studies were carried out with fruit substrates, good probiotic count, improvements in nutritional properties, better acceptability and quicker fermentation time was found incereal based products. Hence, it is concluded that cereal based products is more suitable for the production of non-dairy probiotic products.

Cereals; Fermentation; Non-Dairy; Plant Foods; Prebiotics; Probiotic Products

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