Chr. Hansen Launches Chewable Probiotic Offering

Probiotics is a fast growing category within dietary supplements and the emerging awareness of the benefits probiotics can convey has led to an increasing interest worldwide.

24/10/08 Chr. Hansen has supplied probiotics for the dietary supplements industry for many years. Now the Danish biotech company has extended its product portfolio with probiotics in a chewable tablet dosage format.

“The chewable tablets are intended for all age groups but particularly suitable for children,” says Charlotte Beyerholm, Marketing Manager, Health & Nutrition Division, Chr. Hansen. “This convenient way to easily consume the beneficial probiotic cultures is an exciting alternative to the traditional tablet or capsule. “Today’s consumers appreciate to be able to choose among a number of different dosage formats. Furthermore, this is an opportunity for our customers to differentiate their products from those of their competitors,” continues Charlotte Beyerholm.

Probiotics have been studied and used for children for several years and are found safe. Numerous studies in children show good results on both gastrointestinal health and the immune system. A healthy flora in the gut does not only improve gut well-being but also beneficially influences the gut interaction with the immune system.

Probiotics — meaning “for life” in Greek — is a fast growing category within dietary supplements and the emerging awareness of the benefits probiotics can convey has led to an increasing interest worldwide. For the year 2000 there were 174 scientific articles on probiotics to be found in the PubMed search engine of biomedical research articles. For the year 2007 there were 795 articles. Throughout the decade the number of clinical trials registered at www.clinicaltrials.gov has climbed dramatically.

Probiotic supplements have been used around the world for at least half a century and today the probiotics category for dietary supplements is growing at an estimated 10-15% annually. But still almost half of Americans indicate that they have never heard of probiotics, according to a recent survey conducted by Harris Interactive. A recent consumer survey conducted by Nutrition Business Journal revealed that while 75% of the U.S. population use multivitamins on a weekly basis, only 25% use probiotics supplements on a weekly basis.

Chr. Hansen’s well-known probiotics for dietary supplements and dairy applications include the flagship strains BB12, LA5 and L.Casei CRL-431.

Earlier this month, following a global agreement with Tetra Pak, Unistraw granted Danisco the worldwide exclusivity for the sales and market¬ing of its internationally-patented straw concept for use with HOWARU premium probiotics. This award-winning concept from Unistraw will allow consumers to sip a probiotic daily dose with any of their favourite beverage.