The “intestinal flora” is currently a topic of greatest concern in the Japanese health food market, and the lactic acid bacteria (LAB) market increasingly grows and has formed an LAB boom that is triggered by the sales growth of the yogurt added with live bifidobacteria and LAB, and what further promotes the market development is the sterilized LAB (dead LAB).

Dead LAB have achieved good market performance as a dietary supplement long since, and have been added in snacks, cup noodles and other common foods in recent years. They even appear on some food chain menus, with quite extensive applications.

Dead LAB have characteristics like stable quality and processing convenience, and their functionality and constantly accumulated research data have gradually become known to the market, in particular, the specialty of immunity activation of the dead LAB attracts much attention of consumers. And the development of relevant antiallergic, antifatigue and anti-avian influenza commodities, etc. is ongoing.

Characteristics and benefits of sterilized LAB (dead LAB)

■After LAB are cultured and then heated and killed, the bacteria can be highly concentrated, with the number of each gram to be largely increased (it is said that the number of 100 billion/g is the technical limit for live bacteria, while the number of sterilized LAB could reach 7 trillion/g).

■As a result, more bacteria could be taken in with just a small amount of addition.

■The pollution can be minimized thanks to the sterilization, therefore, we don’t need to worry about the pollution problems of food factories.

■The expiration period can reach 2 years, longer than that of live bacteria.

■Sterilized LAB can be added to almost all preparations, and almost all foods, especially, the foods with high water activity and the heating process.

Increase of the supply with the vigorous publicity by the raw material enterprises

Just as the name implies, the sterilized LAB are the raw material after the LAB are heated and killed. With the previous publicity of concept like “still alive in the small intestine”, the idea of “LAB are live” is deeply rooted in consumers’ minds, however, sterilized LAB also have their functionality compared to live LAB.

In fact, the usefulness of the sterilized LAB had already been demonstrated 100 years ago. The Russian microbiologist Metchnikoff proved the health effect of LAB, and mentioned the viewpoint that the aging of humans is due to the corrupt matters caused by harmful intestinal bacteria, and the secret to long life is reducing harmful bacteria by having yogurt.

The “Health of Long Life” published in 1907 mentioned the proliferation suppression effect of the LAB contained in yogurt on intestinal spoilage bacteria, as a result, there was the boom of LAB research which also involved sterilized LAB. Certain literature showed that the life of the mouse that took the bait added with heated and sterilized LAB had extended 8%.

The usefulness of the sterilized LAB had been involved in the research at that time. The function of probiotics has been made clear in modern LAB market, resulting in the above cognition of “LAB are live” to be widely accepted by the market.

The improvement of intestinal flora has become a subject in the present market, with the sales of yogurt added with live LAB and bifidobacteria experiencing explosive growth; on the other hand, a large number of commodities of dietary supplements, beverage, snacks, and semi-finished cooked food, etc. added with dead LAB have been marketed, mainly because of the convenience in applying dead LAB and the widely accepted ample evidence.

In Japan, established manufacturers like Combi, Nihon Berumu and Broma Institute have conducted research on the functionality of the enterococcus faecalis, and continued to release the latest research information to promote the operating activities, which has established the foundation for the sterilized LAB market; furthermore, IHM and Kameda Seika, etc. have gradually become the representative supplier of  plant lactobacillus; KITII and other companies also have made sufficient functional studies on the subject of mouth health, with the market recognition gradually expanded. The sterilized LAB market has formed. In fact, Morinaga Milk Industry, a large milk industry manufacturer in Japan, had been striving to expand the probiotics market, thereby, participating in the sterilized LAB business, which is one of the main reasons for the formation of the mature market.

Instead of saying that we differentiate LAB functionality by life or death, it would be fairer to say that we have entered the era of judging the usefulness according to the effects produced by the varieties, strains and bacterial states.