Probiotic ice cream: viability of probiotic bacteria and sensory properties

Abstract

Ice cream is a dairy product with good potential to act as a food carrier for probiotic bacteria. The incorporation of probiotic bacteria into ice cream is highly advantageous since, in addition to making a functional healthy food, ice cream in itself contains beneficial substances such as dairy raw materials, vitamins and minerals, and is consumed by the general population. Also, compared with fermented milks as a vehicle, ice cream supports considerably greater viability of probiotic strains during production and especially storage. However, losses in the viability of probiotic bacteria in ice cream unavoidably occur during product formulation, processing, storage and melting. During these stages, probiotic cells are subjected to different stresses related to pH, acidity, redox potential, freezing, oxygen (especially in overrun processing), sugar concentration and osmotic effects, hydrogen peroxide, antagonistic impact of co-cultures (in fermented ice creams), and mechanical shearing. It seems that the rate of loss of probiotic cells is greater during the freezing process than during storage. Practicing methods such as selection and application of oxygen-resistant probiotic strains, elimination of molecular oxygen (using oxygenscavenging components, packaging material that is impermeable to oxygen as well as thicker packaging materials and active packaging systems), applying severe heat treatment, using microencapsulation techniques, and adjusting the product formulation (e.g., fortification of milk with nutrients and prebiotics) can increase the viability of probiotics in the final product. Supplementation of ice cream with probiotic bacteria has been found to have little effect on its flavor, texture or other sensory characteristics. There are also many ways to improve the sensory attributes of the product to compensate for any changes that do occur. This article reviews the viability of probiotic bacteria in ice cream and the main methods used to improve their viability and the sensory characteristics of probiotic ice cream.

Combined effects of replacement of sucrose with d-tagatose and addition of different probiotic strains on quality characteristics of chocolate milk

“…This attribute is known as "viability," namely adequate number of live probiotic cells in a food product at time of consumption (Mortazavian et al 2010). No general agreement has been established on the recommended and suggested levels ranging from 10 6 to over 10 7 cfu.mL −1 (Ferdousi et al 2013;Korbekandi et al 2011;Mohammadi et al 2011a;Mortazavian et al 2010Mortazavian et al , 2011. However, it is generally recommended that probiotic culture must be present in the product at minimum numbers of 10 7 cfu.mL −1 (IDF 1992).…”

“…During the past few years, diversity of probiotic foods has increased on the market. Nowadays, probiotics can be found in non-fermented dairy products such as milk (Shin et al 2000), ice cream (Mohammadi et al 2011a) and dairy dessert , and non-dairy products such as fruit juices, cereal-based foods (Helland et al 2004), and meat-based products .…”

Effects of Different Levels of Refined Cane Sugar and Unrefined Coconut Palm Sugar on the Survivability of <i>Lactobacillus acidophilus</i> in Probiotic Ice Cream and its Sensory and Antioxidant Properties

“…Sugars can reduce probiotic viability by osmotic stress and also increase their survivability by cryoprotective and prebiotics properties of sugars. These sugars effects on probiotics depend on the type and concentration of sugars, type of probiotic organism, freezing temperature and rate, freezing technology and storage time (Mohammadi et al, 2011). Refined sugar (e.g., lactose…”

Synbiotic yogurt-ice cream produced via incorporation of microencapsulated lactobacillus acidophilus (la-5) and fructooligosaccharide

“…Encapsulation helps to protect the bacterial cells from the hostile environment of the food product, as well as the gastrointestinal tract, thus potentially preventing cell loss (Homayouni et al 2008). It may cause an appropriate cell release in the intestinal medium (Mohammadi et al 2011). Shah and Ravula (2000) reported that the survival of probiotic bacteria in fermented frozen desserts improved with encapsulation.…”