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IV. Resultados y discusión. Capítulo II 159
product at the time of consumption (Gomes and Malcata, 1999; Stanton et
al., 2003; Van Niel et al., 2002).
Although the dairy industry is the major sector involved in developing
probiotic products, other food areas have recently become involved such as
nut, cereal or other vegetable milk industries. The so-called vegetable milks
have special relevance since, besides their nutritional and health benefits,
they contain prebiotic compounds which make them interesting and useful
to produce synbiotic (combination of probiotic and prebiotic) products.
Prebiotics were defined by the Food Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations (FAO) as “non-viable food components that confer health benefits
on the host associated with modulation of the microbiota”.
There is a wide range of commercial vegetable milks, although the ones
derived from nuts have recently been the subject of interest due to the
known impact of their compounds on some current chronic diseases such as
cardiovascular diseases (CVD), type 2 Diabetes mellitus (DM-2), obesity
and some cancers (Fardet, 2010). Tree nuts are rich in mono- and
polyunsaturated fatty acids, vegetable proteins, dietary fibre, phytosterols,
polyphenols, vitamins and minerals (Philips et al., 2005; Segura et al.,
2006); most of those compounds have antioxidant properties and have a
proven beneficial effect on plasma lipid profile, low-density lipoprotein
(LDL) oxidation and inflammatory processes, among others (Liu, 2012;
Carlson et al., 2011; Egert et al., 2011; Gillingham et al., 2011; Jones et al.,
2011). Indeed, epidemiological studies have linked frequent nut
consumption to a reduced risk of CVC, DM-2 or death by all-cause
mortality (Kelly Jr and Sabaté, 2006). Li et al. (2009) observed that an