Supermarket nutritionists could have told you years ago that cultured dairy products, such as yogurt and kefir, include naturally occurring bacteria that help calm and regulate the digestive system. These beneficial bacteria — now popularly referred to as “probiotics” — occur naturally in many other foods as well, ranging from sauerkraut to miso to kombucha.
Now, however, scientists are isolating and studying bacteria believed to have specific, beneficial relationships with their hosts. For example, researchers have recently discovered strains of helpful bacteria that may help improve resistance to colds and viruses when used regularly by healthy adults, and others that may help control certain allergies over time.
Advances in cultivation have boosted the development of probiotic strains that can survive baking and other types of processing, and as a result, probiotic claims are no longer limited to dairy products or super-premium juices. They're emerging in products such as cereals and energy bars — even gums and lozenges that claim to help with chronic bad breath. Almost 900 products with probiotic claims were launched worldwide in 2008, including 96 in the U.S., according to Mintel's Global New Products Database.
“I have noticed an increase in interest,” said Joy Kemp, healthy living director for Dayton, Ohio-based Dorothy Lane Market. “A lot more doctors are recommending them for patients that have been taking antibiotics. You need to put the friendly flora back in your system after taking antibiotics.”
Kemp added that growing consumer interest in these helpful bacteria may have been spurred, in part, by an unrelated rise in the number of people facing digestive issues.
“I've known for years that probiotics were good for digestive function and boosting your immune system. But I think digestive issues are becoming more common, due to the way people eat today,” she said, adding that daily multivitamins, omega-3s and probiotics are the top three supplements she recommends to shoppers.
There are signs that shoppers are getting that message. In bimonthly consumer surveys by the NPD Group, a growing number of shoppers have been mentioning probiotics. Recently, they became one of the top five ingredients that respondents wanted to add to their diets, placing probiotics in the same pool with whole grains, fiber, omega-3s and antioxidants.
“I think it's gaining traction,” noted Harry Balzer, vice president of the NPD Group and author of the Port Washington, N.Y.-based research consultancy's annual Eating Patterns in America report. “It's nowhere near the level of people who now say they want to add whole grains to their diets. The number of people who would like to add more whole grains to their diets is at more than 60%. That's not true of probiotics — only about 16% or 17% of consumers right now are saying they'd like to add probiotics to their diet, and 12% are saying that probiotics are something they'd like to remove from their diets. So the majority of Americans don't know what we're talking about yet. But clearly this is something where opinions have been changing rapidly during the past two years.”
Balzer noted that avoiding harmful substances — such as fat, sugar, caffeine and cholesterol — defined healthy eating for a generation. But in recent years, America's concept of nutrition and healthy eating has been shifting, so that shoppers aren't just concerned about cutting calories and cholesterol, but also about adding good things to their diets, such as whole grains, antioxidants and omega-3s. Probiotics, he added, seem to be joining that broader trend.
Shoppers' understanding of probiotics has gotten a significant boost from the marketing push behind Dannon's Activia brand yogurts.
“Consumers don't discover these things on their own,” Balzer said. “Someone is promoting something — a health benefit — and it captures [the public's] attention. And if it complements a part of our diet, and there's a healthful benefit to it, it will tend to find its own group of people who are interested in it.”
While Activia is probably helping to build awareness of probiotics — and other product lines may ultimately help shoppers understand that these functional foods aren't one-trick ponies, exclusively benefiting the digestive tract — analysts noted that part of Activia's success might be attributed to the growth and resilience of the yogurt category. Although yogurt volume was flat last year, dollar sales of the $3.6 billion category were up more than 9% in August 2008, according to data supplied by Information Resources Inc. for SN's annual category guide.
“Overall, when you're looking at supermarkets in an economic environment like we have today, people are eating at restaurants less and shopping at supermarkets more,” noted Alan Hiebert, education information specialist for the International Dairy-Deli-Bakery Association, Madison, Wis. “If people aren't going out for lunch, they're going to be brown-bagging it. And ever since suppliers started packaging yogurt in single-serve containers, it's become a perfect lunch food. So it seems to me that it's in a good position to continue its growth.”
Hiebert added that consumers lately are willing to try new products with functional claims in hopes of improving their health, and that growth in the yogurt category will likely continue come from line extensions and new products, such as those with probiotic claims. But he also noted that shoppers may be fickle with products that, unlike yogurt, can't easily be incorporated into their diets.
“When you look at an economic environment that we have today, people will tend to stick with what they know,” said Hiebert.
That may pose a challenge for probiotic products that offer less tangible or less noticeable benefits than those that focus primarily on digestive health, particularly if they are more expensive than conventional or nonfunctional alternatives.
For example, Group Danone, the European parent company of Dannon, recently ceased production of its Essensis brand yogurt in Europe, which has a much more established market for functional foods than the U.S. Enhanced with borage oil, vitamin E and green tea extract, Essensis launched in 2007, promising shoppers that after six weeks of daily consumption, they would enjoy noticeably healthier skin.
Live yogurt cultures and probiotics were not a point of emphasis for the brand, but the product's lackluster sales could hint at the challenges similar functional foods might face when they ask consumers for a long-term commitment to a new product.
“The problem with all health benefits is that most of these products tend to be a more expensive option [than similar, non-enhanced alternatives],” Balzer said. “It's an issue that has to be overcome, and it could be a real reason why these trends tend to come and go. At one time, the talk was all about low-cholesterol products, and low-cholesterol products were priced at a premium. After consumers found out that there was little immediate benefit, they moved away from it. We tend to do things because they're new. We continue to do them if they save us time or they save us money. You have to provide [consumers] with a real, tangible benefit.”
