ABSTRACT
The aim of both prebiotic and probiotic functional food ingredients is to improve the
health of consumers by selectively altering the composition and/or activity of microbial
populations within the gastrointestinal tract. While the probiotic approach endeavors to
directly deliver supplemental beneficial bacteria to the gut, prebiotics offer an alternative
strategy. Rather than supplying an exogenous source of live bacteria, prebiotics aim to
selectively stimulate the proliferation and/or activity of desirable bacterial populations
already resident in the consumer’s intestinal tract.
