“Just as there are a few major blood types that divide up the world, so too, a study has found, there are just three types of gut-microbe populations. The result could help to pinpoint the causes of obesity and inflammatory bowel disease, and to personalize medicine.” … “A person’s gut type might help to determine […]
The BBC has recorded an excellent radio programme about gut bacteria, including a discussion of the fundamental uncertainty about the very specific advertised claims for probiotics. You can download it directly in mp3 format (the file is 13Mb) by clicking here: Case Notes – Gut Bacteria
Danon have launched a site called Activia Referral Pad which specifically targets healthcare professionals in an attempt to get them to prescribe Activia, despite losing a class-action lawsuit over their claims that Activia promotes the immune system and the mixed findings that probiotics may be useful in some medical settings, but may be extremely harmful in […]
The Food Programme looks at new legislation controlling how food companies can make health claims for their products. There’s a segment in there about a research group who look at prebiotics and probiotics, particularly yoghurts, which is funded by the food industry. Note how, when he talks about the benefits of strains of bifidus, the […]
I like yogurt. But do probiotics – those “friendly” bacteria in yogurt and increasingly added to other foods – do anything for you beyond making yogurt taste good? I wrote about probiotics in What to Eat at some length. Tara Parker-Pope has a quick summary of the state of the research in today’s New York […]
Funny that this article suggests that some probiotics can prevent diarrhoea, when the advertising seems to hint much more at alleviating “bloating” – which implies constipation rather than diarrhoea… Read the full article : Probiotics: Looking Underneath the Yogurt Label
This is the sort of yoghurt whose advertisement features middle-class women drinking coffee from a cafetiere and complaining in a sharing sort of way that they feel bloated all the time. Now, I know that this feeling of bloatedness comes from living like a lobotomised, over-propertied seal at the end of history rather than from not […]
BBC Radio 4’s Case Notes talks to Chakravarthi Rajkumar, Professor of Geriatrics and Stroke Medicine at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, who has a special interest in the use of probiotics to reduce some of the unwanted side effects of antibiotics in his elderly patients. Marnie Chesterton reports from Utrect in the Netherlands, where trials […]
Here’s an interesting story in terms of the wording of Dannon’s health claims for their DanActive yoghurt – but the compromise wording seems in many ways more misleading. At least the statement that DanActive has “a positive effect on your digestive tract’s immune system” is something that can be proved or disproved with research – […]
A TV advert which asserted that Actimel yogurt supported children’s natural defences against disease has been banned by the advertising watchdog. The Advertising Standards Authority ruled that claims that it could help protect school-age youngsters against illness were not supported by evidence. Full story