Here is something particularly inspiring when an individual entrepreneur builds a product around an ingredient featured in products by some of the top food companies around the world. Bridget Reilly, owner of The Bite Market specialty grocery in Orange, California (www.bitemarket.com), has developed a gluten-free cookie containing LactoSpore^®, Sabinsa's proprietary shelf-stable probiotic with GRAS status. She is selling the oatmeal chocolate chip ProbiOatie Cookies from her store, and even better, serving them in Sabinsa's booth (#24027) at Supply Side West, to be held at the Sands Expo Center, Las Vegas, November 14 - 15, 2013.

It all started when Bridget worked with Sabinsa as a chef for a cooking demo using Sabinsa's ingredients at a previous trade show, and was inspired by the idea of LactoSpore's dairy free aspect. Bridget's focus in her store and her recipes is gluten free. Many people with gluten sensitivities have conditions that benefit from probiotics. Probiotics are now clinically shown to have a number of health benefits including usefulness in irritable bowel syndrome, allergic conditions, skin health maintenance, and dental health maintenance, in supporting healthy blood pressure levels, immune functions and liver functions pain/ inflammation relief support, and in supporting cardiovascular health and wellness.

"Using LactoSpore in my cookies is a great way to incorporate probiotics into a person's diet. The fact that they are shelf stable means that people can take them anywhere," Bridget said. "Reactions from my customers have been extremely positive, they say the cookies remind them of home."

Bridget says customers love them, and she sells out of the cookies regularly. She is also offering plain oatmeal, and oatmeal raisin ProbiOaties.

LactoSpore's GRAS status allows the manufacturer additional freedom to add LactoSpore as a probiotic in a variety of foods and beverages ranging from baked goods to milk products, soups, snacks, candy, non-alcoholic beverages and even instant tea and coffee. LactoSpore has already gained acceptance by major food producers, such as Perman sliced bread in Colombia and Tutti Frutti Frozen Yogurt, the world’s top-selling frozen yogurt brand.

LactoSpore^®, sp. Bacillus coagulans, formerly known as Lactobacillus sporogenes is a shelf stable (at room temperature) probiotic, with clinically documented efficacy in supporting health and wellness. Being in spore form, the culture survives and proliferates in the gastrointestinal environment unlike vegetative cells that may be destroyed under these conditions. The culture produces only the beneficial L-(+) form of lactic acid in the gastrointestinal tract.