By Xi’an App Chem-Bio (Tech) Co., Ltd.

Functional factors of intestinal health—probiotics and prebiotics

Probiotics and prebiotics are always a topic that cannot be got around when speaking of intestinal health. Probiotics are bacteria benefiting human body, and can be directly used as food additive, to maintain intestinal flora balance, while prebiotics are food of beneficial bacteria of human body, and are nondigestible food ingredients that beneficially affect and improve health of the host by stimulating the growth and activity of beneficial bacteria of human body. According to Euromonitor International’s analysis of global probiotics consumption patterns in 2016, the global probiotics market size reached USD 24.6 billion in 2016, wherein, China accounted for about USD 4.4 billion; according to Development Status and Strategic Consulting Report of World Prebiotics Market 2017-2025, the prebiotics market continuously and stably grows worldwide, with size of USD 2.903 billion in 2015, and size to be about USD 8-10 billion by 2025, with compound annual growth rate of 10.4%. The probiotics and prebiotics industries are a rapidly growing sunrise industry.

The probiotics (such as lactobacillus acidophilus, lactobacillus casei, bifidobacterium longum, bifidobacteria breve, lactobacillus reuteri, lactobacillus rhamnosus, and lactobacillus bulgaricus) and prebiotics (such as fructooligosaccharide, xylooligosaccharide, isomaltooligosaccharide, galactooligosaccharide, and inulin) we know originated from and are industrialized in the Europe, U.S. or Japan, while, stachyose, a kind of quality prebiotics industrialized in China, is Chinese strength to the intestinal health field.

Stachyose—green, safe, and efficient super prebiotics

Stachyose is a natural tetrasaccharide with structure of fructose-glucose-galactose-galactose (chemical formula: C24H42O21, molecular weight: 666.59), and widely exists in bean products, such as soybean and mung bean, but the low content is low, generally between 2% and 4%; stachyose is also richly contained in the TCM herba lycopi, Rehmannia glutinosa, and Salvia miltiorrhiza, and deemed as one of the active ingredients thereof; the industrialized stachyose is mainly from the Lamiaceae Stachys Stachys sieboldii and Stachys floridana.

At the beginning of 1980s, Japanese scientists discovered that the common traditional Chinese medicinal materials Rehmannia glutinosa and Salvia miltiorrhiza, etc. contained rich stachyose, and studied the function of stachyose in regulating intestinal flora, to try to interpret the mechanism of action of the traditional Chinese medicinal materials from the perspective of intestinal regulation; in the late 1980s, soybean oligosaccharides were popular on the Japanese market, such syrupy product contains 24% moisture, 18% stachyose, 6% raffinose, 34% cane sugar, and 18% others, with the main active ingredient proved by research to be the stachyose, however, stachyose product with high purity could not be obtained due to the difficulties in separation and purification; in 1996, the research team of China National Research Institute of Food & Fermentation Industries succeeded in preparing stachyose from the Stachys sieboldii raw material, thus making the industrialization possible; the stachyose product quality steadily improves at present with the gradual optimization and maturity of the process, and the industrialization of stachyose product with 80% and even 90% content has been achieved.

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