Postbiotics yeast vs bacteria: what is the difference?

Report from Petfood Forum Europe, Nuremberg, Germany

On May 6 2024, Dr. Francesca Susca, DVM, Ph.D., Global Pet Product & Business Development Manager at Lallemand delivered a lecture at PetFood Forum Europe in Nuremberg, Germany, titled: “Postbiotics yeast vs. bacteria for pet food: What is the difference?”.

She highlighted the main difference between yeast and bacteria cells and how those differences, together with the strain specificity and the applied production process, affect the functionalities of the postbiotic solutions. If you missed it, we are pleased to share the abstract down below!

Postbiotics yeast vs bacteria

Humanization is still a strong trend within the pet industry. As pets live longer and are considered as family members, more and more pet owners want to provide their pets with human-like products and experiences. This has seen many pet product retailers and manufacturers in drawing inspiration from human lifestyle and in looking for natural and functional ingredients, with a clear mode of action. From this, come many demands and challenges for manufacturers such as viability through processing, shelf life and labelling claims. Among the available functional foods, probiotics are well recognized for their benefits on gut health, immunity, and overall wellbeing. Probiotics boasts a sound scientific foundation, although there are a number of practical limitations to their industrial application. However, today there is growing evidence suggesting that supplementation of inactivated microbials and/or their fractions (Postbiotics) may also confer health benefits.

In 2019, the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics (ISAPP) has published a consensus statement defining Postbiotics as a “preparation of inanimate microorganisms and/or their components that confers a health benefit on the host”. Having a general accepted definition of postbiotics has been useful for several actors in the pet industry to have common ground for future activity in this area and has also promoted innovation and development of new postbiotic products.

As per above statement, Postbiotics can be either yeast or bacteria as far as they are inanimate – not able to replicate anymore – but still maintaining their functionality and thus being beneficial to the host. Indeed, the nutraceutical potential of such postbiotics solutions, processed from specific microbial strains is rapidly emerging. Postbiotics have been linked to a number of health benefits mainly related to the gut and the immune system, but also involving the Gut-Organs Axis. Aim of this presentation is to illustrate the main  difference between yeast and bacteria cells and how those differences, together with the strain specificity and the applied production process, affect the functionalities of the derived Postbiotic solutions.

Both yeast and bacteria are unicellular organisms and have fermentation capabilities but they are deeply different in composition, metabolism and mode of action:

Postbiotics yeast and bacteria combine the so precious technical advantage of being shelf-stable to the maintained functionality and thus the capacity to support pet health and wellbeing. But it’s key to have a good knowledge and clear understanding on how postbiotic yeast and bacteria differently interact with the host in order to be able to select the right postbiotic solution for the right application.