A comprehensive review of Bifidobacterium spp: as a probiotic, application in the food and therapeutic, and forthcoming trends

AbstractRecently, more consumers are interested in purchasing probiotic food and beverage products that may improve their immune health. The market for functional foods and beverages that include Bifidobacterium is expanding because of their potential uses in both food and therapeutic applications. However, maintaining Bifidobacterium's viability during food processing and storage remains a challenge. Microencapsulation technique has been explored to improve the viability of Bifidobacterium. Despite the technical, microbiological, and economic challenges, the market potential for immune-supporting functional foods and beverages is significant. Additionally, there is a shift toward postbiotics as a solution for product innovation, a promising postbiotic product that can be incorporated into various food and beverage formats is also introduced in this review. As consumers become more health-conscious, future developments in the functional food and beverage market discussed in this review could serve as a reference for researchers and industrialist.Keywords: Bifidobacterium sppprobioticshealth advantagesfoodtherapeutic Author contributionsLAKS, SKC, KS, KDA, RT, and HYH wrote and reviewed the manuscript; PLP supervised, and reviewed the manuscript.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Correction StatementThis article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.Additional informationFundingThe author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.