Traditional Foods as Sources of Probiotics

Fermentation is used for centuries to preserve foods and food components and enhance their shelf life and nutritive value. Traditional and ethnic fermented foods and beverages are popular all over the world and known for their nutritive and functional properties. People consuming fermented beverages, vegetables, fruits, grains, and dairy foods have a history of long healthy life. Topical state-of-the-art measures have unveiled structural and functional attributes of microbial niches in fermented foods. Due to rising awareness about health benefits of probiotics and their metabolites, there is a surge of interest in realizing pro-health benefits of ethnic fermented foods, unraveling and utilizing the microorganisms therein for commercial applications. This chapter highlights some foods acknowledged to harbor probiotics with multiple health benefits.