Dive Brief:
- Danone SA is a major player in the $86 billion yogurt industry, which is posed to make still more headway if yogurt companies can devise a way to harness the product's properties and improve the health benefits yogurt can offer consumers.
- To do this, with the help of another Dutch research institute, Danone has developed a sophisticated piece of medical technology the company calls TIM, or "TNO intestinal model." TIM can shed light on how properties of yogurt will be affected by the human body and conversely how the human body is affected by those properties.
- This information could help Danone and other researchers determine the best bacteria and combinations of bacteria to use to create optimized yogurt products that could lead to an increase in yogurt sales as a leader in healthy breakfast and snack foods.
Dive Insight:
"The machine mimics the extraordinarily complex, dynamic process of human digestion. After foods or ingredients are sent down its chute, they snake through a biochemical obstacle course—confronting the punishing acids of the stomach and the erosive enzymes of the small intestine, monitored all along their daylong trek by watchful researchers," according to Fortune.
Greek yogurt has contributed to consumers' growing preference for yogurt, which has already negatively impacted other breakfast categories, like cold cereal. With scientific research available to improve this category even more, yogurt may have the chance to further grow and impact the breakfast foods of the future.