6 Things You Didn’t Know About Prebiotics

You may be aware of the power of prebiotics or you may be a newcomer, but what exactly are prebiotics and how can they help our diet?

First things first, let’s breakdown exactly what a prebiotic is:

Prebiotic
(Noun)
A non-digestible food ingredient that promotes the growth of beneficial microorganisms in the intestines.

In other words, prebiotics are small ingredients in food that can’t be digested by our gut but instead promote the growth of healthy bacteria and aid in the production of valuable vitamins.

You may have heard of probiotics before which are live beneficial bacteria naturally created by the process of fermentation, but the two have very different jobs in the digestive tract.

Pre and probiotics go hand in hand and are often referred to in the use of this handy metaphor: think of the difference between a prebiotic and a probiotic as a garden. As the probiotic bacteria are seeds, the prebiotic fibre is the water and fertilizer that helps the seeds to grow and flourish – now isn’t that lovely?

Now, as we’re focussing on pre’s, what other fun facts do we know about prebiotics?

1. As well as helping to produce vitamins, prebiotics promote growth of beneficial bacteria, such as lactobacilli and bifidobacterial, but they don’t feed the bad microorganisms or pathogens.

2. They can be added to any foods as they are resistant to heat, oxygen, stomach acids and enzymes. This makes them super strong in comparison to probiotics, which are easily destroyed by all these things!

3. While all prebiotics are fibres, not all fibres are prebiotics.

4. Scientific studies show that increasing your intake of prebiotics helps to support immunity, digestive health, bone density, weight management, regularity and brain health – now that’s something!

5. At nearly 65% of fibre by weight, raw chicory root is one of the biggest and best sources of prebiotics available.

6. Despite being found naturally in grains like wheat, gluten-free alternatives, such as amaranth, quinoa, millet and buckwheat, can act like prebiotics and don’t feed pathogenic yeast – great news for gluten-free sufferers!

Even better news, our Raw of the Wild Kombucha drinks are packed to the rafters with plenty of prebiotics, which makes them utterly unique amongst other Kombucha ranges, which usually only contain probiotics.

It’s because of this powerhouse punch of both prebiotics and probiotics that help you to digest much more easily and gain some serious vitamins to boot.

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