ABSTRACT
New trends in food intake by consumers now include nutritional needs for a state of well-being and the fact that diet may modulate some physiological functions and could promote some positive effects on consumers’ health. Numerous publications in recent decades have indicated a need for health care through food in fully active young people, a search for a potential increase in life expectancy by means of selected diets or functional foods, and an improved quality of life for older people. Beyond the numerous advertising campaigns and government policies tending toward better consumption practices in the population, mediated by vegetables, fruits, and regular dairy product intake, consumers also look for new, more technological, and healthy foods. The food industry, many years ago, analyzed this quest for new foods and surfed on this wave for consumers’ satisfaction. The proposed products have to be safe; have a good marketing aspect, that is, looking as natural as possible, which often means looking as if they could be home-cooked by the consumer himself from raw materials; have to be appetizing; and as often as possible, have to give an additional range of health benets in addition to mere nutritional needs. Among the numerous proposals of new foods, probiotics have, during the last three decades, taken an important percentage of industrial efforts in the elds of nutritional aspects, technological aspects of food making, and potential positive effects on consumers’ health. Numerous types of foods have been proposed to the consumers, corresponding to
14.1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 355 14.2 Probiotics, Dairy Products, New Tendencies ............................................... 356 14.3 Probiotic Nondairy Cereal Beverages .......................................................... 358 14.4 Probiotic Soymilk ......................................................................................... 361 14.5 Probiotic Fruit and Vegetable Juices ............................................................ 362 14.6 Other Probiotic Beverages ............................................................................ 365 14.7 Conclusions and Perspectives ....................................................................... 365 References ..............................................................................................................366
