Probiotic bacteria in flax seed beverages

Abstract

Most probiotic foods at the worldwide markets are dairy-based and very few attempts were made for the development of probiotics cereal-based food. In the present work, a whole-grain flax seed substrate was fermented with lactic acid bacteria (LAB), particularly with Lactobacillus paracasei subsp. paracasei DSM 20312 and Lactobacillus acidophilus DSM 20079 to obtain probiotic beverages. Others substrates were fermented by those probiotic bacteria, such as, Bioflax® (milled flax seeds without fatty acids) and milled flax seeds with fatty acids. Therefore, was evaluated the levels of several factors, such as pH, the shelf life under refrigerated storage, the viable cells during 0h, 24h and 48h of fermentation at 37˚C and the amounts of sugars and organics acids formed during the fermentation through HPLC analysis. API test showed that the strain isolated from fermented milk product “Yakult” it is Lactobacillus paracasei subsp. paracasei DSM 20312. After pasteurization, a contamination of whole-grain by sporulated bacteria was observed, which was not observed after pasteurization of milled flax seeds and Bioflax®. By HPLC analysis it was observed a decrease of lactic acid levels and an increase acetic and propionic acids along the fermentative process. It was also observed that the levels of lactic acid are higher after 24 hours of fermentation. The results of storage time were not conclusive because a large proportion of samples were contaminated by sporulated bacteria after 52 days.