To your good health
As fermented foods continue to grow in popularity, research at Teagasc’s Food Research Centre is examining the possibilities of an old drink seen in a new light: beer.
Photo credit: Photodjo/istockphoto.com.
Beer is one of the most widely consumed fermented beverages, with up to 128 litres being consumed per capita across European Union countries in 2023. While it may come as a surprise to some, food scientists are increasingly examining non-alcoholic beer for its potential as a health-conscious beverage; as a fermented food, non-alcoholic beer is a promising candidate for the ‘health drink’ category.
Fermented foods have attracted increased attention in recent years for a variety of reasons; affordability and sustainability traits, easy preservation and cheap production, and sensory and health-promoting properties.
Ana Soriano Lerma, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Teagasc Moorepark’s Food Research Centre, explains further: “Microorganisms used in fermentation can enrich the final product by activating bioactive molecules and nutrients that wouldn’t be available otherwise, as well as increasing flavour and aroma compounds that makes fermented products more attractive to consumers. Moreover, many of the fermentative strains also have probiotic or postbiotic properties, the consumption of which are associated with health benefits.”
Fermented foods have been shown to reduce disease risk and improve health and the quality of life, partly via enhancing gut microbial diversity and decreasing inflammation.
Innovating microbes
The gut microbiome is considered a key contributor to intestinal and systemic health; modulating the gut microbiome through dietary interventions has been established as an effective tool to address health issues. As a complex symbiotic ecosystem, the gut microbiome provides the host with essential functions such as digestion, metabolite synthesis or regulation of immunity. The role of intestinal microbes is not limited to the gastrointestinal tract, since microbial metabolites can be absorbed and impact other organs such as the liver, muscle or the central nervous system.
“So,” asks Ana, “what if we could innovate the ways in which microbes are used to brew widely consumed fermented beverages to impact health?”
Traditional beer brewing techniques are focused on the use of Saccharomyces yeasts. The wort – the sweet infusion of ground malt or other grain that serves as a base for beer – contains free sugars. The main aim of traditional brewing is to transform these sugars into ethanol.
“However, fermentation extends way beyond alcohol production,” she adds. “Fermentation could be used as a means to impact the healthiness, flavour, aroma and texture of the final product.”
What might the implications be if researchers could mimic the microbial community in other beverages and could combine microbes in such a way that they can produce a healthier and tastier beer?
These microbial communities are composed of lactic acid bacteria (LAB), acetic acid bacteria (AAB) and yeasts. Many LAB and AAB are characterised by prebiotic and postbiotic effects, opening up a way to increase the health impact of beer, Ana explains.
“By adding not just yeasts, but also bacteria, to the fermentative community, one can broaden the range of metabolites that can be produced and that will enrich the final product, thus enhancing its health impact and sensory traits. The wort itself has prebiotic properties too, since it contains polyphenols – a group of micronutrients noted for their strong antioxidant properties.”
But how can researchers come up with the right combination of microbes? Can they gain prior knowledge of what microbes to choose, or do they have to rely on trial and error? These questions can partly be answered by current advances in bioinformatics and omics techniques, which allow researchers to analyse biological molecules at large scale to understand the structure, function and dynamics of organisms.
State-of-the-art bioprocessing units at Teagasc’s Food Research Centre are an important tool for microbial processing. Photo credit: Teagasc.
‘Designing’ ideal fermentation
By using Teagasc’s cutting-edge sequencing facilities, researchers can study the genetically encoded metabolic capacity of LAB, AAB and yeasts through whole genome sequencing.
In addition, the use of the Teagasc High Performance Computer Cluster allows one to reconstruct the metabolic network of each strain based on whole genome sequencing data, Ana notes.
“Theoretically, we can know which microbes produce what, individually and in combination. This way we can target molecules to be present in the final product, allowing us to ‘rationally design’ which microbes to combine into communities to perform the ideal fermentation. The analysis of the final product will then tell us if our predictions were correct.”
This approach, based on using small, easily controllable communities and studying their interaction with a food matrix, is referred to as ‘synthetic microbial ecology’.
“To the best of our knowledge, it has never been explored in beer brewing,” Ana points out.
However, another big question remains when analysing the effect of beer on health: what about the alcohol? There are contradictory results regarding the effect of alcohol in beer; some publications show no negative impact on the gut microbiome, while others highlight alcohol as an obstacle to obtaining the health benefits characteristic of the non-alcoholic fraction of beer.
“It’s possible that the core microbial community could also help control alcohol production by transforming ethanol to organic acids, which would in turn improve the beer’s health impact,” says Ana.
“So, for anyone who’s looking for their next favourite beer, but who’s also conscious of staying healthy, the non-alcoholic beers are definitely worth giving a try.”
Genome sequencing of yeast is one step towards ‘designing’ microbial communities in beer. Photo credit: Teagasc.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge Wicklow Wolf Brewery and Lisa Ryan of the National Centre of Brewing and Distilling, Teagasc Oak Park, for their assistance in this research.
Funding
Research funded by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Horizon Europe and APC Microbiome Ireland.
CONTRIBUTORS
Ana Soriano Lerma, Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, Teagasc Food Research Centre, Moorepark.
John Kenny, Senior Research Officer, Teagasc Food Research Centre, Moorepark.
Find out more about the author’s work by listening to the podcast at this link on RTE Brainstorm.