If I was just another mainstream consumer searching for the right probiotics, it would without a doubt be a super confusing shopping experience…and I see that as a major problem. Probiotics are the go-to for gut health…and outside of highlighting yogurt as a clear food example, probiotic supplements would be where most consumers reach if they were looking to maintain or improve the "good" bacteria in their body. But probiotic supplements can be costly, and their formulation varies widely. Traditionally, probiotic supplements were tailored to those looking to better their digestive health, but positioning has recently broadened into areas such as immunity or mood support as mainstream consumers better understand that nearly all internal systems of the human body are influenced by the gut. Moreover, incorporating these functional ingredients into snacks and beverages is driving further growth for the already multibillion-dollar probiotics industry. I say all this because while consumers are certainly more aware than ever about gut health…and probiotics are more commercially available than ever…could that perfect storm be creating unintended consequences? If you’ve shopped for probiotics recently, you likely got tripped up by the labeling guideline reasons for all that genus, species, and strains naming convention stuff for probiotics...which led you to focus on numerical measures. If a supplement has one probiotic…then a supplement with two or heck twenty probiotic strains must be better, right? But it’s possible that some combinations of strains may not work together. Or what is an even more common numerical measure is how supplement brand marketers emphasize colony forming units (aka CFU) count on the bottle. Probiotic supplement brands have pushed CFU count as the major point of differentiation because it gives consumers an easy number that they can use to compare competing products. That makes sense on some levels…except for the fact that the CFU count doesn’t mean much on its own and only tells a consumer what kind of numbers a probiotic supplement starts with…not how many bacteria make it to your gut alive. Comparison by CFU count also generates a business challenge for the supplement industry because of its commoditization effect. So, supplement brands looking to increase the efficacy and attractiveness of finished products containing probiotics need to lean into clinically researched strains and avoid getting caught in the price by CFU count commoditization trap. But the biotics market overall has become increasingly fascinating to me yet I’ll be the first to admit that I’m far from the subject matter expert that will get into the nitty gritty of science, especially when it seems as though researchers are discovering more about the gut microbiome basically every day. So, I decided to ask my good friend Noah Voreades to join me in an insightful conversation that helps drive home some points about the probiotics market.

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