Live cultures called to active duty

In case you missed the press releases from a handful of newly opened frozen yogurt shops around the city, probiotics-infused foods are all the rage. Berry Chill, Starfruit and Yoberri are just a few of the Chicago dessert shops to boast the live bacteria.

But while the consumer market only recently jumped on the bacteria bandwagon, food technologists at the U.S. Army have been experimenting with probiotics for years hoping to capitalize on the health benefits of the live bacteria and develop foods for military personnel abroad.

"We've always been interested in looking at things that might improve [soldiers'] quality of life," said Danielle Anderson, food technologist with the combat feeding program at the U.S. Army's Natick Soldier Systems Center, which is responsible for researching and developing "everything the soldier wears, carries and consumes."

"As food science people we keep up on the trends and what is going on, and we kept seeing probiotics a lot in the literature," she said. "And that was maybe four or five years ago."

According to guidelines set by the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization in conjunction with the World Health Organization, probiotics are "live microorganisms which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host."

Earlier this month, the Natick Soldier Systems Center participated in a conference hosted in New Orleans by the Institute of Food Technologists, a Chicago based nonprofit scientific society with 22,000 members working in food science, food technology and related professions in industry, academia, and government.

Dr. Roger Clemens, an IFT spokesperson, says the institute provides a forum in which emerging science on food can be presented.

"The concept of probiotics is over 100 years old. The emerging science, however is relatively new," said Dr. Clemens. "The number of clinical trials with a variety of strains of probiotics has grown exponentially. And because of that exponential growth we're beginning to see that food companies and the military are saying perhaps we should examine this and apply this to improve digestive health."

According to Anderson, improving soldiers' digestive health is a primary concern for the U.S. Army because "war-fighters"-a term used to describe members of all the military branches-have long suffered from intestinal issues, particularly diarrhea, while serving overseas.

"The medical command was looking for anything that might help [the problem]," said Anderson. "And we were reading articles that said there's a possibility that having a healthy bacterial population in your gut can help decrease the incidence of diarrhea."

The challenge is to create probiotics-fortified food that stands up to the military's requirements for rations and maintains the properties that make probiotics beneficial.

"We are conducting a clinical trial right now on probiotics because when you look at what is available on the market a lot of it is refrigerated items and for the most part military rations do not have refrigeration," Anderson said.

"If something were to go into the MRE, which is the 'meal ready to eat,' that would need to last for three years at room temperature. Most probiotics products don't last that long because in order to work the probiotic has to actually still be alive when you consume it."

Anderson said the current clinical trials being conducted are focusing on dosage and shelf life of probiotics. Because war-fighters won't be eating probiotics-fortified food as often as regular consumers, military food technologists need to make sure they can get a colonization of probiotics within the large intestine when war-fighters are only consuming the products every couple of days.

"We are also looking at the difference between the colonization when you eat fresh food product made with fresh, young healthy nonstressed bacteria versus a group that's going to get food product with very stressed and injured probiotics," Anderson said.

"In all seriousness what they would be getting in the field would be the stressed, injured version. So the question is when they actually enter the intestine if they are stressed and injured can they still repair themselves and grow." she added.

While Anderson said it would be possible tomorrow to get a probiotic into a limited-shelf-life-ration that could potentially last a year, it's not what they are looking to accomplish.

"We want to show and to prove some benefit for the war-fighter before we actually put it into the ration," Anderson said.

Even if the clinical trial goes well and there is good colonization and good survival rates for the injured and stressed probiotics it will be a few years before these foods make it to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, she said.

After the research projects Anderson is working on are finished, and they've decided what strains to put in the food products it will be field-tested with war-fighters for taste and acceptability. Then, if approved, it will enter a cycle of products that are rotated in and out of the military rations.