Investigation of the Total Number of Aerobic Mesophilic and Lactic Acid Bacteria in Commercial Probiotic Products in Turkiye

In this study, it was aimed to determine the total aerobic mesophilic and lactic acid bacteria counts of the most common commercial probiotic products, which are preferred for various health benefits and offered for sale in the market in Türkiye, and to investigate the compliance of their declarations to Turkish Food Codex.

In the study, 30 commercially available probiotic products with different brands, lot numbers and content were, examined. By the microbial analyses the mean counts for, total aerobic mesophilic bacteria and total lactic acid bacteria were detected as 1,9x10⁷ cfu/ml and 4,6x10⁶ cfu/ml, respectively. According to the results of the analyses, the total number of aerobic mesophilic bacteria and total lactic acid bacteria of commercial probiotic dairy products and bars tested in this study were found in accordance with the Turkish Food Codex. However, the total number of aerobic mesophilic bacteria and total lactic acid bacteria in the probiotic tea products were detected lower than as stated in the Turkish Food Codex.

As a result, it has been determined that the main probiotic products, except the tea form, were comply with the Turkish Food Codex in terms of the lactic acid bacteria they contain, but these products do not contain enough live microorganisms according to the relevant legal regulations of different countries. It was concluded that although these results help to create a general impression on the compliance of the probiotic products to the legal regulations, further studies should be performed to identify the strains that declared on the label of the products and determine the contaminations with different types of microorganisms.