Botanicals impact the bifidogenic effect and metabolic outputs of in vitro fiber fermentation by gut-derived microbiota in individual-specific ways

Fortification of products frequently consumed by a large proportion of society provides an attractive strategy to close the "fiber gap" and may have the potential to concomitantly reverse the detrimental health effects exacerbated by our modern diets. Besides prebiotic fibers, products can contain other functional components, e.g. botanicals. However, most studies have investigated functional components in isolation. The impact of other components present in functional product blends on the bifidogenic effect typically exerted by prebiotic fibers are largely unexplored. Here, we investigated the fiber and botanical blends included in OLIPOP, a functional soda, in an in vitro gut fermentation model. Our data revealed that the blend of inulins and resistant dextrins promoted growth of bifidobacteria across gut microbiota from four donors, even those with small initial populations. In addition, botanicals interacted with fiber fermentation in donor-specific ways, in some cases strongly enhancing fermentation rate and production of short-chain fatty acids. Graphical Abstract O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=144 SRC="FIGDIR/small/537114v3_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1"> View larger version (24K): org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@129f0f2org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@89bc29org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@a03976org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@11c724c_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG