What is the difference between yakult and actimel

Indeed, the Food Standards Agency has commissioned research into whether popular brands of probiotic yoghurt drinks do make it past the stomach and into the intestine. It did so because it is concerned at "an almost total absence of comparative data on the survival of probiotics in the human gut.

So, where do the most popular brands, Yakult and Actimel, fit into this complicated picture? Do they contain enough bacteria to be effective? And do the particular strains of probiotic bacteria that they contain have any proven health benefits? Yakult, which means yoghurt in Esperanto, was developed in Japan more than 70 years ago. In , Dr Minoru Shirota, a researcher at the faculty of medicine at Kyoto University, isolated a strain of probiotic bacteria, which was named lactobacillus casei shirota in his honour.

Shirota then developed the drink, Yakult. It is now drunk by an estimated 25 million people every day. Yakult clearly identifies the exact strain of probiotic bacteria that its product contains. And each dose contains 6. However, Yakult, in common with all other probiotic drinks, does not claim that its product can treat any diseases. In fact, it is prevented from doing so by UK and EU law, which bans the use of medicinal claims for foods.

As a result, its TV advertising shows a woman strangely attracted to a geek who knows all about the benefits of "friendly bacteria. What we promise is that Yakult positively influences the balance of beneficial bacteria in the gut. It is a very modest claim.

Actimel is a fridge staple around the country, and is well known for providing you with a tasty daily shot of yoghurty goodness. These little plastic bottles of cultured yoghurt come in a variety of flavours — everything from vanilla and coconut to a mix of mango, goji berry and turmeric — and each shot contains more than ten billion Lactobacillus casei cultures along with vitamin B6 and vitamin D for healthy bones and teeth.

Key features — Active ingredients : Lactobacillus casei; Type : yoghurt drink; Size : g bottle. Buy now from Tesco. Yakult, which hails from Japan, is a fermented milk drink developed in the s by Minoru Shirota, who then gave his name to the specific bacteria strain found in Yakult: L. As well as the promised health benefits, this bacteria helps to give the drink its sweet, tangy, somewhat fruity flavour. Key features — Active ingredients : Lactobacillus casei Shirota; Type : fermented skimmed milk drink; Size : 65ml bottle.

Made with coconut milk, Biomel has four flavours that taste as decadent as they sound: we love the Belgian Dark Chocolate, which is like drinking a slightly nutty chocolate milkshake, but the Pure Vanilla, Natural Coconut, and the Almond Salted Caramel, made with almond milk, are equally creamy too.

The consistency is quite thin, as you might expect from a coconut-milk-based product not to be confused with coconut cream from a can. Each of the chunky little shot bottles counts as one ml serving and contains billions of Lactobacillus cultures, as well as B6 and D vitamins and added calcium too. The lack of stomach irritants such as lactose and gluten makes them a great choice for allergy sufferers.

These bacteria produce chemicals which are good for our hearts and for our gut lining. Oats also contain a soluble fibre called beta glucan, which has been shown to reduce cholesterol and have a range of other benefits, so a bowl of oat porridge could give you a double health bonus! Home Episodes Clips Presenters Issues covered in the programme. Main content. Do probiotics do any good? Useful links. Dr Karen Scott www. Are smoothies good for me? View Are smoothies good for me? View Do probiotics do any good?

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As part of their syllabus they learn that probiotics "strengthen the immune system", a phrase disconcertingly close to the pitch used by manufacturers to sell probiotics such as Yakult and Actimel to ordinary consumers. Speedier fattening, needless to say, is not a promise for which many of us are prepared to pay a premium. It is not clear who coined the word probiotics — which simply comes from the Greek "for life". Nor is it clear how the word spread into UK school science teaching.

In fact, probiotics — the name given to specialised bacteria added to foods that are said to improve digestion or general health — seemed to emerge out of nowhere in the s. The live cultures or bacteria in plain live yoghurt have been said for generations to boost beneficial gut microflora, particularly when you have taken antibiotics.

But plain old live yoghurt is cheap; probiotics like these are highly packaged and highly processed with the high margin for growth manufacturers need. They are part of a whole category of heavily marketed new foods, variously called nutraceuticals or functional foods, making claims to promote our health. Human beings have managed without them for millennia, but in just 10 years an extraordinary number of us have been persuaded by the food industry that we need them for the sake of our health.

How and why that happened is a fascinating commentary of the nature of advanced capitalism and its genius for making consumers want whatever it has to sell. The food market in affluent countries is saturated. Growth cannot come just from making us eat more, since there is a limit to our physical needs. But tap into our deep-seated emotional needs and, as political commentator Neal Lawson points out in his new book All Consuming, there is no limit to what we can be persuaded to buy.

Yakult, a yoghurt drink made by the Japanese company of the same name, was the pioneer. It burst on to the European market in the s as a fermented milk drink with an added strain of healthy bacterium, Lactobacillus casei Shirota. It was launched in the UK in in a heavily sweetened drink in what look like little toy milk bottles.

The utilitarian design and miniaturisation of its packaging managed to give it both an aura of healthy, almost medicinal, purpose and to make it as attractive to children as doll's house furniture. So how did these drinks gain such a hold?

Thanks to a detailed submission about Actimel by Danone's advertising agency to the industry's advertising effectiveness awards in , I was able to gain an inside view of how the marketers managed to persuade us to buy their probiotics on a mass scale. In , that submission explains, Danone had set its sights on the UK market for yoghurt and "Actimel was chosen as lead foot soldier" with the aim of getting us "drinking Actimel every day".

Persuading us that we needed to have a daily dose of this sort of premium-priced functional food was not plain sailing. Actimel spent millions on a TV advertising campaign in Britain in , but by it was clear the British public was not entirely convinced by Actimel.