For 25 years, Jeffrey Roberts, a technology consultant in Toronto, battled frequent diarrhea and abdominal pain. Roberts, who suffers from irritable bowel syndrome, was unable to attend his children's soccer games and often had to cancel or postpone family vacations. "I'd hold my family back because I'd have a lot of discomfort," he says.
But three years ago, he started taking a powdered drink mix that contains eight strains of probiotic bacteria. "It dramatically changed my symptoms," he says.
Roberts is one of many turning to probiotics. In an ad campaign for Dannon, actress Jamie Lee Curtis cozies up on a green sofa, rubs her tummy and says, "First, the bad news: 87% of this country suffers from digestive issues like irregularity."
The good news, Curtis explains, is she that has discovered Activia yogurt, which is laced with probiotics -- live, "friendly" bacteria -- that the company claims are "clinically proven to regulate your digestive system in two weeks."
Activia has also proved itself with consumers. In 2007, its second year on the market, sales grew by 48% to $181.3 million. Indeed, probiotics are turning up in myriad foods: Naked Juice fruit drinks, Lifeway Foods' energy bars, even a probiotics popsicle recently launched in the United Kingdom.
Last year was a banner one for probiotics, with 158 new food products hitting grocery shelves, compared with just four launches five years earlier, according to Datamonitor's Productscan Online, a database of consumer goods.
Companies claim that the daily consumption of probiotics can provide consumers with benefits such as a boost to the immune system and relief from intestinal distress -- and researchers think that certain probiotic strains hold promise in a number of areas.
But how significant these benefits are is a matter of debate. And it can be tough to decipher which products offer verifiable health claims and which are piggybacking on the hype of the booming industry.
A recent lawsuit filed in Los Angeles has questioned Dannon's probiotic health claims made for Activia and DanActive and charged that the company used scientific-sounding language to deceive customers. And studies have reported that some companies misidentify the probiotic strain they contain or deliver inadequate amounts of bacteria.
What's in a strain?
