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Globally, the therapeutic properties of food are gaining increasing attention, and “food as medicine” has become the preferred health management approach for many people. Dietary fiber, antioxidants, and probiotics (commonly found in fermented foods) not only provide essential nutritional needs but also offer a variety of overall physiological benefits. These benefits include enhancing immunity, promoting bone health, maintaining a healthy weight, balancing gastrointestinal status, lowering blood cholesterol levels, reducing the risk of heart disease, preventing neurodegenerative diseases, alleviating inflammation and oxidative stress, regulating blood sugar levels, and preventing cancer, among others.
Any dietary components that benefit host health can be defined as “functional” ingredients, and foods containing these chemical or biological components are referred to as functional foods. Ingredients such as oligosaccharides, flavonoids, lactic acid bacteria, vitamins, essential fatty acids, dietary fiber, lignin, and minerals can all render food functional. In traditional foods, these components may be found in vegetables, legumes, nuts, fruits, grains, dairy products, and fermented products. Under certain disease conditions, consuming functional foods in our daily diet can help achieve physical and mental well-being naturally, rather than relying solely on medication.
Some epidemiological studies suggest that consuming fermented functional foods can effectively reduce the incidence of various health-related diseases, including gastrointestinal diseases, cancer, allergies, diabetes, heart disease, lactose intolerance, and obesity. In recent years, an increasing number of studies have found significant health benefits from the intake of functional foods, greatly enhancing interest in preventing diseases through functional diets and healthier lifestyles. This shift has not only improved public health outcomes but also promoted innovation and sustainability in the food industry.
In recent years, the importance of the gut microbiota in human health and disease has garnered increasing attention, further accelerating research into functional foods, as diet is a crucial factor influencing the composition of the gut microbiota. Newborns enter a microbial environment immediately after birth, leading to the colonization of microorganisms in the gut, which then changes throughout an individual’s life, forming a complex gut microbiota influenced by diet, lifestyle, and the host’s genome. The core gut microbiota remains relatively stable throughout an individual’s adult life. The gut microbiota prevents the growth of foreign microorganisms, including pathogens, by maintaining their presence and providing niche protection, a process known as “colonization resistance” or the “barrier effect.”
Changes or imbalances in gut microbiota diversity can negatively impact health, leading to the onset of many diseases. Traditional medications often provide limited relief for these diseases and may sometimes further disrupt the gut microbiota, exacerbating the severity of the condition. Therefore, regulating the gut microbiota to maximize the presence of beneficial microorganisms can help modulate an individual’s immune system, metabolic processes, digestive physiology, and gut-brain communication, thereby positively impacting overall host health. This is where probiotics come into play; functional foods containing probiotics can help maintain gut microbiota balance and defend against intestinal pathogens.
The term “probiotic” is derived from the Latin “pro” (meaning “for”) and the Greek “bio” (meaning “life”), used to denote active entities that are crucial for the health and development of living organisms. The use of probiotics has a history spanning thousands of years. However, it was not until the pioneering work of Russian scientist Elie Metchnikoff that probiotics began to gain public attention. Metchnikoff believed that the presence of Lactobacillus bulgaricus in yogurt was linked to the higher life expectancy of the Bulgarian people who consumed this yogurt. He proposed that the food we ingest affects our gut microbiota and that dietary changes could help us replace pathogenic microorganisms in the gut with beneficial ones, thus laying the foundation for the concept of probiotics.
With the advent of DNA sequencing technology in the late 1990s, research on probiotics accelerated once again. This technology has enhanced our understanding of the human microbiome and its impact on human health and disease. In the modern world, probiotics are defined as viable single or mixed culture bacteria that, when introduced into a human or animal host, can improve the host’s native microbiota. Numerous studies have shown that probiotics play a significant role in improving individual health, meeting basic nutritional needs, and preventing certain diseases. The most common probiotics currently are Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium. Additionally, many Gram-positive bacteria, such as Propionibacterium freudenreichii, Enterococcus faecium, Bacillus, Streptococcus thermophilus, and yeasts, are also widely used in the commercial production of probiotic products.
Probiotics are products with nutritional properties that can be consumed as food or dietary supplements, and they can also be used as therapeutic drugs. Therefore, probiotics are categorized into “Nutribiotics” and “Pharmabiotics.”
“Nutribiotics” refer to probiotics with nutritional value found in food or dietary supplements. They positively impact the nutritional status of consumers in several ways: by producing specific essential nutrients (such as vitamins), converting certain precursors into essential bioactive metabolites, and alleviating health issues dependent on nutritional status or metabolism. In recent years, a new concept has gradually emerged: the viability of bacteria is not the only important factor for probiotics to exert beneficial effects on host health. For example, some non-viable probiotics (Paraprobiotics) or inactivated probiotics may also provide health benefits to individuals at appropriate doses. Although inactivated probiotics are not active, they can still retain their immunomodulatory potential, primarily relying on the cell wall components of dead cells.
In 2002, scientists first proposed the concept of “Pharmabiotics,” defined as microorganisms with specific pharmacological functions in disease states. Pharmabiotics consist of various active or inactivated microorganisms, metabolites, and components used as biopharmaceuticals. Specific metabolites or cell-free supernatants, secreted by live or lysed bacterial cells, are also known as Postbiotics. Postbiotics include antimicrobial peptides, short-chain fatty acids, organic acids, vitamins, teichoic acids, intracellular polysaccharides, extracellular polysaccharides, peptidoglycan-derived cell wall peptides, enzymes, and cell surface proteins. Postbiotics have well-defined chemical structures, longer shelf lives, and safe dosage characteristics, containing many molecules with antimicrobial, anti-obesity, anti-inflammatory, antihypertensive, immunomodulatory, cholesterol-lowering, antioxidant, and antiproliferative activities. They can positively impact individual health by modulating the host’s physiological functions.
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