Probiotics: A Way of Value Addition in Functional Food

Abstract

An intense acceptance of functional foods due to consumer’s demand, social attitudes, scientific evidence of the human health benefits of a particular ingredient coupled with commercially driven interest to add value to existing foods have projected probiotics as a new way in the current era of self-care and complementary medicine. Diverse functional properties of probiotics led their incorporation into conventional, dietary supplements and medicinal foods and must be ingested in sufficient quantities to exert health benefits but are often present at lower levels as per the label claims. Worldwide regulations related to probiotics are incoherent and adoption of assay techniques are inconsistent, therefore establishment and reinforcement of a quality assurance program to ensure “Standard of Identity” for adopting the label “Probiotic” is emerging. *Corresponding Author: S. Sarkar Department of Quality Assurance Metro Dairy Limited Barrackpore-Barasat Link Road Subhasnagar, P.O. Neelgunj BazarKolkata-700121, West Bengal, India. E-mail: drsurajitsarkar@yahoo.co.in Received: February 26, 2016 Accepted: April 20, 2016 Published: April 25, 2016 Citation: S. Sarkar, et al. (2016) Probiotics: A Way of Value Addition in Functional Food. Int J Food Sci Nutr Diet. 5(4), 290-293. Copyright: S. Sarkar*© 2016. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. International Journal of Food Science, Nutrition and Dietetics (IJFS) ISSN:2326-3350