Can Supplemented Skim Milk (SKM) Boost Your Gut Health?

Abstract

The incorporation of functional ingredients, such as prebiotics and probiotics in food matrices, became a common practice in the human diet to improve the nutritional value of the food product itself. Worldwide, skim milk (SKM) is one of the most consumed food matrices, comprising all the essential nutrients desired for a balanced diet. Thus, the modulation of the human gut microbiota by SKM supplemented with different well-known functional ingredients was evaluated. Four well-studied prebiotics, fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS), galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS), mannan-oligosaccharides (MOS) and inulin, and one probiotic product, UL-250® (Saccharomyces boulardii) were added at 1% (w/v) to SKM and subjected to a gastrointestinal in vitro model. The impact of each combination on gut microbiota profile and their fermentation metabolites (i.e., short-chain fatty acids–SCFA) was assessed by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), respectively. The addition of FOS to SKM had promising results, showing prebiotic potential by promoting the growth of Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, and Clostridium cluster IV. Moreover, the increment of SCFA levels and the decrease of total ammonia nitrogen were observed throughout colonic fermentation. Overall, these results demonstrate that the combination SKM + FOS was the most beneficial to the host’s health by positively modulating the gut microbiota.

Development of a Chicken Gastrointestinal Tract (GIT) Simulation Model: Impact of Cecal Inoculum Storage Preservation Conditions

“…A FerMac 260 pH controller was used to maintain the pH between 6.0 and 7.0 (the pH of the chicken cecum) in each vessel [35], and the temperature was kept at 41 • C for 48 h with the help of a water bath. Samples of 10 mL were taken aseptically from each vessel, at 0, 24, and 48 h, and processed according Carvalho et al ( 2022) [36]. The analysis of SCFA and lactate was performed by HPLC.…”

“…The supernatants collected after centrifugation were filtered (0.22 µm) and directly analyzed by HPLC in duplicates, as described by de Carvalho et al (2022) [36]. Lactate, acetate, propionate, butyrate (2 mM to 80 mM), and DMSO (2 mM to 650 mM) were identified and quantified using their corresponding calibration curves.…”

Production of Sustainable Postbiotics from Sugarcane Straw for Potential Food Applications

“…Separation was performed in the Aminex HPX87Pb column (BioRad, Hercules, CA, USA) with a mobile phase of 0.005 M of sulphuric acid at a flow rate of 0.6 mL/min. Following centrifugation, the supernatants were filtered (0.22 µ m) and immediately analyzed by HPLC in duplicate [25]. Using their matching calibration curves, malic acid, lactate,…”

“…Chromatographic analysis was performed with high-performance liquid chromatography, Agilent 1200 HPLC system with a refractive index (RID) detector (1260 Infinity II, Agilent Technologies; Santa Clara, CA, USA), and diode array detector (DAD) operating at 50 • C. Separation was performed in the Aminex HPX87Pb column (BioRad, Hercules, CA, USA) with a mobile phase of 0.005 M of sulphuric acid at a flow rate of 0.6 mL/min. Following centrifugation, the supernatants were filtered (0.22 µm) and immediately analyzed by HPLC in duplicate [25]. Using their matching calibration curves, malic acid, lactate, acetate, butyrate, ethanol, xylose, mannose, galactose, glucose, arabinose, and fructose were identified and measured.…”

Metagenomic study of the gut microbiota associated with cow milk consumption in Chinese peri-/postmenopausal women

“…Several previous studies have assessed the effect of dairy products on human GM, but many have focused on fermented dairy like yogurt ( Link-Amster et al, 1994 ; Odamaki et al, 2012 , 2016 ; Yılmaz et al, 2019 ; Jie et al, 2021 ) or special dairy products like casein powder ( Beaumont et al, 2017 ) or whey bars ( Reimer et al, 2017 ). Some recent studies showed that cow milk could influence the alpha ( Fernandez-Raudales et al, 2012 ; Shuai et al, 2021 ) and beta diversity ( Aslam et al, 2021 ; Shuai et al, 2021 ) of GM and relative abundance (RA) of some taxa including phyla p_Bacteroidetes and p_Proteobacteria and genus g_Roseburia , g_Lactobacillus , g_Prevotella , g_Bifidobacterium , g_Clostridium , g_Streptococcus , g_Atopobium , g_ Leuconostoc , and g_Veillonella in humans ( Fernandez-Raudales et al, 2012 ; Bendtsen et al, 2018 ; Swarte et al, 2020 ; Aslam et al, 2021 ; de Carvalho et al, 2022 ). However, very few studies have reported cow milk’s effect on human gut bacterial species ( Aslam et al, 2020 ).…”