Science Probes How Probiotic Yogurts Affect Your Gut 'Friendly'
microbes might affect metabolism, but whether they're good for
you is still unclear, researchers say By Alan Mozes WEDNESDAY,
Oct. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers have put the health
promises of popular probiotic yogurts to the test and found they
may alter the way in which food is metabolized. But whether that
means probiotic foods and supplements can improve your health
remains to be seen, they said. "Federal regulatory agencies are
increasingly interested in evaluating all the health claims
being made by probiotic food manufacturers," said study co-
author Dr. Jeffrey Gordon, a biologist and director of the
Center for Genome Sciences at Washington University School of
Medicine, in St. Louis. "So what we did was try to develop a
model for the human gut that can give us a way to measure the
effects." What they saw, Gordon said, "is that adding a few
billion of these microbial organisms to a gut community already
containing tens of trillions of