New challenges to traditional biotechnology - fermentation

The process of fermentation was traditionally leveraged by the human population to increase the shelf life of perishable agricultural produce such as milk, vegetables and meat. Nowadays, fermentation has much more potentials. It can do things that we in most cases think that only can be done by recent technologies (eg: genetic manipulation, synthetic food additives, etc)

In addition to offering unique sensory sensations, as the label on the package or the advertisements will most likely tell us, several other benefits can be offered using the process of fermentation. In this article some recent developments in the health arena will be discussed.

Natural fortification

Over the past 10 years, the process of fermentation has become recognized as a relative easy and one hundred per cent natural technology to raise vitamin levels in foods and beverages. Numerous examples, especially involving dairy applications, have been presented showing natural enrichment with riboflavin folate, vitamin B12, vitamin K2 and sometimes several of these vitamins, simultaneously.

Fermentation for addressing obesity

Fermentation, almost by definition, will contribute to calorie reduction by converting sugars into organic acids or ethanol, although the maximum calorie reduction that can be reached in such fermentation processes cannot be more than 25%, since organic acids contain 3 kcal/g versus 4 kcal/g for sugar. Another approach of the food and beverage industry is to develop consumer products or ingredients that lead to early satiation of the consumer.

Fermentation for increasing anti-oxidant activity

Recent studies have shown that enzymatic and microbial activity can lead to conversions of several antioxidants. As such, fermentation could also contribute to improved health of the consumer on the level of increased anti-oxidants and there are clinical studies indicating that this is indeed the case for the examples of orange and soy.

Fermentation for even longer shelf-lives

Traditionally fermented consumer products have relatively long shelf-lives ranging from about 4 weeks for liquid fermented dairy products to a year or longer for some dry fermented sausages and alcoholic beverages. Still, there is always a need for longer and more complete protection. To address this problem, food microbiology research has devoted much attention to finding microorganisms, and especially lactic acid bacteria, that produce antifungal compounds. A number of antifungal-producers have been identified and also some unique antifungal components have been elucidated such as various cyclic peptides and metabolites such as 3-phenyllactic acid.

Fermentation can deliver many benefits to foods and beverages. Besides unique flavours and textures as exemplified in traditional fermented products such as yoghurt, cheese, soy sauce and kimchi, many novel benefits, especially with respect to health, can be conveyed via fermentation technology. All this can be achieved via complete sustainable and 100% natural processes either by up-scaling existing, traditional kitchen-style processes or by using successful fermentation processes/microor- ganisms on novel substrates.