How Baobab Fits the European Consumer’s Trends 1

Because of the increasing number of single households, and the fact that not only men, but also working women in the EU spend less time at home, full meals are prepared much less often. In this scenario, modern consumers are not limited to the three traditional meal times, breakfast, lunch and dinner, instead they nibble between meals.

Small between-meal-snacks are popular and there is an increasing demand for convenience food, which is food already prepared or semi-prepared for the consumer. This eating pattern rarely gives a balanced diet, containing all the important nutrients. One answer to this problem is the addition of functional foods like baobab with the goal of promoting good health and compensating for nutritional deficiencies.

In recent years, the interest in probiotic, prebiotic and symbiotic functional foods has grown enormously. Probiotic products are living microbial food supplements, which beneficially affect the host animal by improving its intestinal microbial balance. The soluble fibers of baobab fruit pulp are prebiotic and probiotic: non-digestible food ingredients that beneficially affect the host by selectively stimulating the growth and/or activity of beneficial micro flora (Gipson and Roberfroid, 1995).