QHT Introduces Water-Less Prebiotic Range for Probiotic Survivability

31 Mar 2017 --- Quantum Hi-Tec China (QHT) has launched a new range of prebiotics that it says act as the perfect companion for probiotics due to its “low water activity.”

Prebiotics serve as nutrition for the good bacteria in the gut, and increase their numbers significantly if consumed alone. Medical reviews have also shown prebiotic fibers to have certain health benefits such as improving constipation and regulating the immune system.

As the market continues to encourage growth of probiotic products, technologists have always been faced with the problem of achieving a high survival rate for these live bacteria and maintaining sufficient activity to have the desired effect on the human body.

Techniques such as encapsulation and adding bacteria spores instead of the live bacteria have all been developed for this purpose.

However, studies have shown that a key factor to survivability of probiotics is the external surroundings and in particular, water activity (WA). Low water activity is key to maintaining probiotic activity.

With overall WA lower than 0.10, the company’s new Water-Less prebiotics aim to maintain both activity and stability of probiotic powder products.

The use of prebiotics together with probiotics creates a synergistic effect and is known as a synbiotic. Hence, swapping traditional probiotic fillers such as maltodextrin with the Water-Less range prebiotics can bring added value to the health benefits of such products.

Other advantages to the Water-Less range also include the elimination of a baking process when preparing the product filler. Given its adaptability to high purity, mesh size and packaging specifications, the Water-Less range is able to provide a better user experience for the manufacturer in addition to cost savings.

Along with providing stability to the product, increasing survivability of the probiotics (live or spore) and simplifying the processes in manufacturing, QHT say that this added value will serve to decrease costs and increase marketability of probiotic powders.

The product is released at a time when a focus toward a healthier lifestyle has lead to an increase of products that claim to be beneficial to gastrointestinal (GI) health. According to Innova Market Insights, launches of products featuring probiotics rose 3% from 2015 to 2016 in the dairy sector alone, and 17% in the sports powders sector.