What is the future of postbiotics and its application in food and beverage?

What is the relationship between probiotics, prebiotics and postbiotics?
According to the FAO/WHO (2001) definition, probiotics are active microorganisms that, when ingested in sufficient quantities, produce health benefits for the host.
While this definition emphasizes that probiotics must meet the requirement that they be “live,” recent research has shown that inactivated or inactive probiotics, as well as their metabolic by-products, can provide health benefits to the host.
In May 2021, the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics (ISAPP) published a consensus statement on postbiotics: Postbiotics are preparations of inanimate microorganisms and/or their components that are beneficial to host health.
Therefore, postbiotics, also known as metabolites, biogenic or cell-free supernatants, are “soluble factors secreted by living bacteria or released by bacterial lysis”. These soluble factors can be short-chain fatty acids, microbial fractions, functional proteins/enzymes, extracellular polysaccharides, cell lysates, cell wall peptides (phosphoglycolic acid, lipophosphoglycolic acid, peptidoglycan, etc.).
Prebiotics, on the other hand, are food components or preparations that are not digested by the host, and that selectively stimulate the activity or growth and multiplication of one or more resident bacteria in the colon to promote host health. Common prebiotics include: inulin-type fructans, oligogalactans, oligosaccharides, soybean oligosaccharides, oligolactofructose, and oligoisomaltose.
For the relationship between prebiotics, prebiotics, and postbiotics, simply put: prebiotics promote the growth of probiotics, and probiotics metabolize to produce postbiotics. In turn, postbiotics promote the use of prebiotics. Probiotics are like “food”, probiotics are the microorganisms themselves, and postbiotics are the result of probiotics consuming “food”.
There are currently 3 ways to regulate the microbiome: probiotics, prebiotics, and postbiotics, providing potential opportunities for growth in the functional foods sector.
How can postbiotics support health?
Postbiotics are a new field and although research on their application is just beginning, scientific data has shown that they have different functional properties, including but not limited to: immunomodulation, allergy improvement, gastrointestinal regulation, antioxidant effects, and inflammation reduction. Postbiotics have emerged as a new means of intervening in the gut microecosystem in recent years.
Several studies have shown that the gut microbiota also produces neurotransmitters that play a role in enhancing mental health, including dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. Butyrate is one of the postbiotics that has important properties for gut healing. In fact, it is a required food for the cells lining the blood vessels of the colon. Butyrate reduces inflammation in the intestinal vascular lining, prevents leaky gut, promotes healthy bowel movements, improves metabolism, enhances brain function, and even prevents colon cancer. Other notable postbiotics include acetate and propionate. Along with butyrate, these three postbiotics make up 95% of the short-chain fatty acids in the body.
The future of postbiotics in food and beverages
Over the past few years, increased consumer awareness and focus on the importance of nutrition and health has led to a rapid rise in functional foods that include probiotics, with the global probiotics market estimated to reach $69.3 billion by 2023.
Due to the fact that the viability of probiotics is essential for their biological efficacy, dairy products are the most common probiotic carriers, and the concentration of probiotics added to dairy products during processing and storage needs to reach 10^6 to 10^9 CFU/g (mL) to maintain viability. Moreover, stress factors such as physicochemical indicators (pH, protein, fat and carbohydrate content, water activity, presence of natural antibiotics), processing and storage conditions (time, temperature, inoculation rate, pH, oxygen content, packaging materials) of probiotic vectors may adversely affect their viability and function.
In contrast, postbiotics are more stable and safer for industrial use. Therefore, their application in food and beverages offers several technical advantages over probiotics:
1, They have little or no interaction with compounds of the food matrix or ingredients, thus extending shelf life.
2, they remain stable over a wide pH and temperature range, and without affecting the function of postbiotics are able to be added to foods with high acidity prior to heat treatment, minimizing post-processing microbial contamination.
3、According to the different products, afterbirth yuan products in the storage and transportation process may get rid of the limitations of the scope of cold chain transportation, in addition to facilitate the product sink to less developed areas, but also saves the cost of the product and loss.
4, afterbirth element will not change the sensory characteristics of the product, food and beverage containing afterbirth element fermentation will avoid taste changes.
The product form of afterbirth element is generally mixed fermentation liquid drying powder, due to its processing stability performance is good, can be applied to room temperature dairy products, beverages, baked goods, confectionery products, miso soup and other general food products that require processing, can also be used as a separate raw material for the preparation of inactivated lactic acid bacterial powder, has a very broad potential for development and application prospects.