Mike Bush, the newly appointed president of Ganeden Inc., wants food and beverage companies to understand there are many options to explore when it comes to including probiotics as an ingredient in products — and they don’t have to be refrigerated dairy products.
Probiotics have made their way into a variety of packaged foods including butter substitutes, granola, cold brew coffee, and pressed water. Probiotics will survive "if it is the right product, and if it is the right market, and you are doing it for the right reasons, which is to provide a real benefit to your consumer," Bush told Food Dive.
In fact, Bush said based on the submissions to the company’s Probiotic Innovation Jumpstart cash-prize contest, most of them are exactly where company’s officials expected them to be: "with ordinary products that people would ordinarily consume on a regular basis," Bush said. "They range across the snack category to the beverage category to the staples."
Bush is a leading advocate for probiotics and has served as the executive board president for the International Probiotics Association. He said IPB and industry leaders such as Yakult and Dannon have done a great service for the probiotics industry by talking about benefits of the organisms.
"Whether it is ours or someone else’s [product], we want to see the industry continue what it is doing," Bush said. He recommends stakeholders, such as manufacturers, reach out to the industry so together they can raise consumer awareness about probiotics.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Food Dive: Highlight your plans for Ganeden’s business development at a time when the use of probiotics is vibrant and innovative.
Mike Bush: Our plans remain the same and that is to continue getting as many people as possible to include Ganeden BC30 and Bonicel (personal care ingredient) in quality products that would resonate with consumers. We will be adding new ingredients to our portfolio in the coming year. The company’s past experiences with consumer products provides its partners with not only formulation of probiotics but also with assistance in finding suppliers and with marketing.
FD: Comment on your new ingredients.
Bush: Our focus is on digestive, immune, inflammation and gut health. Initially, we will continue to focus on that space. We think there are opportunities to help consumers and help businesses develop products that support digestive, immune and inflammatory health. The same thing with sports nutrition; we will do more work in this space.
FD: What are the biggest challenges, as well as the opportunities, for the food and beverage industry when it comes to the use of probiotics?
Bush: One of the key challenges is to get a quality probiotic into a food or beverage product due to the frail nature of the organisms. And that will continue to be a challenge.
As far as opportunities go, for us, is to continue doing what we do, which is to put the organism in products that resonate with consumers.
FD: And, probiotics are indeed resonating with consumers. Fortune Magazine reported that U.S. sales of probiotics are expected to rise 15% this year, up from an estimated $1.3 billion market.
Bush: It is pushing up against $40 billion worldwide. It is a massive market and it isn’t going anywhere. [Editor: The market is projected to reach $46.55 billion by 2020.]
FD: Despite these numbers, the media continues to report on research that finds probiotics are a "waste of money," such as a recent study from the University of Copenhagen. What do you think about this?
Bush: In the meta-analysis they did, they said 'we looked at studies and the daily consumption of probiotics does not alter the microbiota of healthy individuals.'
The question is: What does it matter if you alter the microbiota of healthy individuals when there is tons of clinical data that shows, for example, that certain probiotics, ours included, work very well to modulate the immune system when it is faced with viral or bacterial challenges.
That has nothing to do with modulating the overall microbiome. We are so very early on in the microbiome project. The work that we as an industry are doing, and the government is doing, and everyone else is doing, looking at the microbiome, that no one really knows what a healthy microbiome looks like because there is no ideal, per se.
But, also we look at it and ask, what does shifting microbiome mean?
FD: You have mentioned that the probiotics functional foods ingredient space will continue to grow and gain mainstream acceptance. What is on the horizon?
Bush: A lot of the products we are in are considered mainstream-ish, but typically they are a little bit more fringe natural. A lot of folks want to get into the natural set but have been unable to because their products don’t make it into the natural space. Now they are able to do that.