Sensus, Ganeden team up to offer stable liquid prebiotic/probiotic ingredient

08-Jul-2015 - Last updated on 09-Jul-2015 at 15:21 GMT

Sensus derives its inulin from chicory root. Image credit: Sensus

Ganeden Biotech has teamed up with ingredient supplier Sensus in an alliance to bring a liquid prebiotic/probiotic ingredient to market that adds functionality to food formulations and also solves an issue that prevents wider application of probiotics, one of the partners has said.

The ingredient, branded as Frutalose PRO, is a mixture of Sensus’ existing chicory root-derived inulin syrup ingredient with the Ganeden BC30 Bacillus coagulans probiotic. The result is a highly stable mixture that solves a problem that keeps food producers up at night, namely using powder forms of active cultures in their food facilities, which have the danger of spreading the cultures to places they are not wanted.

“It’s a liquid delivery system for pre- and probiotics into food and beverage applications. Most probiotics on the market are either powders or in a frozen medium,” Carl Volz, president of Sensus America told NutraIngredients-USA.

“There was a need in the marketplace, as many companies don’t want to dump powders of live, active cultures into their vessels. That powder starts getting out into the environment of the food processing facility. With this liquid ingredient, the probiotic is in complete suspension, and there is no possibility that it will migrate as a powder,” he said.

Ganeden’s organism is a spore-former, and only germinates at specific parameters of hydration and temperature over a period of time, conditions achieved only in the human gut. It its spore form it is more or less inert without those trigger conditions, which made it a natural choice for addition to a liquid delivery form, Volz said. Other organisms offered by suppliers might have a tendency to germinate and begin digesting the inulin in the presences of the small amount of moisture in the syrup form, Volz said.

“This blend does not get activated until it hits the gut,” Volz said.

Target applications include dairy foods and drinks, and energy bars, Volz said. Sports nutrition applications could also be a target, he said, especially in light of new research unveiled by Ganeden that the recent Probiota Americas event hosted by NutraIngredients-USA that showed that Ganeden BC30 enhances protein absorption.

Backed by data

intestines — The fiber-probiotic blend does not get activated until it hits the gut

Volz said the pair-up with Ganeden made sense not only because of the nature of the ingredients, but also because of the culture of the two companies. Sensus, whose parent company is based in the Netherlands, and Ganeden, based in Cleveland, OH, are both committed to the science behind their respective ingredients, Volz said.

“We are a science-based company, and Ganeden is a science-based company, too. We see digestive health as being very important to overall health, with the whole gut/brain axis,” Volz said.

“There is a lot of data on the inulin side, and a lot of data on the BC30 side. Inulin is the most studied fiber. We have proved a bifidogenic effect. So you will have the prebiotic effect and the probiotic effect with the BC30, but there are still studies that could be done to show the ‘synbiotic' effect. You could say we have a synbiotic effect because both are happening,” he said.