‘Friendly’ bacteria that won’t come when they are called…

• Last Updated: November 22. 2009 8:14PM UAE / November 22. 2009 4:14PM GMT

The British television presenter and lifestyle coach Amanda Hamilton shares her views on health and nutrition.



A recent BBC report questioning the prevailing wisdom on “healthy” breakfasts left concerned consumers feeling duped and marketing departments reeling. The plight of the innocent consumer was pitched against the might of the marketing machine designed to deliver breakfast any which way – as long as it is processed. In industry terms, “processed” equals profits.

It takes no genius to work out where Coco Pops and Frosties lie in the nutrition league. If the focus of your breakfast is sugary cereal you cannot expect to be top of the vitality table by 11 in the morning!

However, as the report highlighted, many people buy into heavily marketed “healthy” breakfast accompaniments.

Criticising public figures, including sports personalities, who endorse these products, a UK nutrition watchdog, the Food Commission – a body not known for mincing its words – commented acidly: “Celebrities are happy to sell their faces to add lustre to the image of foods of poor nutritional quality.”

But from a nutritionist’s standpoint, the headline grabber that kicked off water-cooler conversations the next day was the very profitable business of probiotic drinks – those little pots of not a lot, or so it seems.

The probiotic drinks industry is worth a very healthy £220 million (Dh1.3bn) a year, generated by 30 million enthusiastic shoppers who have bought into the concept of good bacteria helping to boost immunity and their gut’s delicate flora.

And they are right. The theory behind probiotics appears to be sound, thus seemingly putting probiotic drinks firmly in the “good guys” corner.

The fact is your gut is teeming with more than one billion bacteria, more than the cells in your body. Around 70 per cent of the body’s defences are in the gut, which is constantly under attack from bacteria and microbes that enter our systems with food and drink.

The various species of “good” bacteria are your body’s first line of defence and thus a key component of a healthy immune system.

According to Tom MacDonald, professor of immunology at the London School of Medicine: “Aside from eating a balanced diet, I think probiotics are the only immune-booster with real scientific grounding.”

The question then is not whether probiotics in themselves are beneficial. Nutritionists have been prescribing them for years and they are a recommendation as a matter of course for patients who have been on antibiotics.

The real issue is whether the probiotic drinks available in supermarkets make any measurable difference. This year the European Union’s food agency, the European Food Safety Authority, dismissed 180 claims for probiotic ingredients. Ten were rejected outright and a 21-member expert panel could not assess the remaining 170 because the ingredients for which the claims were made could not be identified.

On the side of the manufacturers, both Yakult and Danone have conducted about 100 trials into the varying benefits of probiotics and steadfastly stick to their message.

My own bugbear on the subject arose recently when I unwittingly became part of the probiotic marketing machine. I found myself in print in a well-read women’s magazine suggesting a certain brand of probiotic yoghurt as part of a diet plan that magically appeared in the final edit after the brand in question agreed to sponsor the feature without my knowledge.

Personal gripes aside, perhaps the most interesting point of all was summed up in an observation by the consumer journalist Felicity Lawrence: that the larger debate is not about how many bacteria these little pots do indeed contain – it is what is within the modern consumer’s mind that has built such a rich industry in such a short space of time.

After nearly a decade these tubs of tart yoghurt have achieved mass consumption, despite the lack of scientific backing. If nothing else, probiotic drinks are a perfect example of advanced capitalism and its genius for making consumers want whatever it has to sell.

* Amanda Hamilton’s detox programme can be seen on The Spa of Embarrassing Illnesses on BBC Lifestyle.