Prebiotics for pets?
The popularity of functional foods is growing with health-conscious people, with many products available on the supermarket shelves. Prebiotics and probiotics may improve gut function in humans. In this article in Microbiology Today (pdf) Bob Rastall explores the potential benefits of including these compounds in the diet of cats and dogs:
Traditionally, human functional foods for gut health have been based on the probiotic concept. Probiotics are live bacterial supplements or food ingredients which, when taken in sufficient numbers, confer health benefits to the host. There are very many well-designed studies showing positive effects with probiotics, although some have not shown an effect. Probiotics have also been applied to pets, and bacterial species from the lactobacilli, bifidobacteria and enterococci are finding their way into pet foods. One big disadvantage with probiotics, however, is the need to keep the organisms viable in order to produce the full range of potential benefits. This is overcome in the human food industry by the use of chilled, usually dairy, products as delivery vehicles, an approach that is not very practical for pet food.
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Tags: Bacteria, Biology, Biotechnology, Health, Microbiology, pets, Science
