Gut health in an Indian kitchen: fibre, curd and counting probiotics.

An Indian kitchen already has most of a gut plan in it. Dal, sabzi, roti, curd, chaas, a fermented batter in the fridge. The supplement is the small part at the end. Here is how the pieces fit, and how to read a probiotic label without being impressed by a big number.

Fibre: dal, vegetables and the roti

The gut runs on fibre. The bacteria that live in the large intestine eat what you cannot digest, and what you cannot digest is fibre. Indian guidance puts it at roughly 30 grams for every 2,000 calories, so 30 to 40 grams a day for most adults, and most city diets fall well short, because the roti has turned into maida, the dal is a small katori and the vegetables are a garnish.

Dal is the easiest fix. A proper bowl, not a soup, twice a day, with the skin left on where you can: chana, rajma, whole moong. Vegetables at both meals, and not only potato. Whole wheat atta rather than maida, and a millet roti sometimes. Fruit with the peel when the peel is edible. Cooled rice, the leftover kind, carries resistant starch, which is a fibre the gut bacteria like, so curd rice is a good thing for more than one reason.

Go slowly. Double your fibre in a day and you will feel it, and not in a good way. Add over two weeks and drink more water, because fibre without water is a brick.

Curd, chaas and the fermented shelf

Curd is a fermented food with live cultures, and a bowl a day is a good habit. It is not a counted probiotic. The cultures in home-set dahi vary by house, by season and by how long it sat, and nobody has measured them. Packet curd may or may not carry live cultures by the time you eat it; the packet rarely says. Idli and dosa batter, dhokla, kanji in winter and some pickles are fermented too, though a heavily salted, oiled achar is a preserve more than a live food.

Eat these because they are good, cheap and yours. Do not expect them to do what a labelled strain does, and do not let a supplement pretend to replace them either.

Strains, and the small print after the name

A probiotic name has three parts, and most brands print two. Genus, species, strain. Lactobacillus is a genus. Rhamnosus is a species. The strain is the code after it, letters and numbers, and the strain is what the research was done on. Two products that both say Bifidobacterium lactis can hold different strains that behave differently. A label without strain codes gives you the family name and not the person. FSSAI publishes a list of the species it permits, so a species on no list is a fair question.

Fewer strains, named, at stated amounts, beats twelve strains in one number: a blend of twelve at fifty billion tells you nothing about any one of them.

CFU: counted when?

CFU, colony forming units, is the count of live bacteria, and the number every label prints is where the trouble is. Bacteria die in the bottle over time, faster in an Indian summer, so a count taken at manufacture is the highest the product will ever be. The honest label states the count at the end of shelf life, the number you get on the last day before expiry. If the small print says at time of manufacture, assume you are getting less, sometimes a lot less.

Storage matters for the same reason. Some strains are built to sit on a shelf, some need the fridge. The label should say which, and a bottle that spent a week in a delivery van in June is a fair question for the seller.

Prebiotics, and a small note on ginger

A prebiotic is food for the bacteria, fibre in a capsule. Partially hydrolysed guar gum, inulin, fructo-oligosaccharides, all stated in milligrams. A few hundred milligrams is a nudge, not a meal; your dal is the meal. Inulin can be gassy at first; guar gum tends to be gentler. Ginger root extract, standardised to gingerols, is the other thing that turns up on gut labels, and its honest job is to support digestive comfort. Your kitchen has ginger; the extract is a stated amount of the same thing.

What the label can say

In India the box says which category it is, in capitals next to the name: Health Supplement, Nutraceutical or Probiotic Food. Whichever it is, it can say it supports digestive comfort, helps maintain regularity, or supports healthy gut flora. It cannot say it treats, cures or prevents anything, and it cannot name a condition. It carries Not for medicinal use, every strain and ingredient with its amount, the 14-digit licence number, a lot, an expiry, the green dot if the capsule is plant rather than gelatin, and an MRP that includes all taxes.

If you have ongoing pain, blood in the stool, weight loss you did not plan, a change in habits that lasts more than a few weeks, or a fever with stomach trouble, that is a doctor's job this week, not a capsule's.

What four weeks tends to look like

One review of a probiotic on an Indian marketplace gives up after six days and calls the product fake. Six days is not a test. Week one: some people notice more gas or a change in habit as the bacteria and the extra fibre arrive. It settles. Week two: nothing much. Week four: some people notice they are more regular and more comfortable after meals, and some notice nothing, and both are normal. Give it the full month, with the dal and the curd alongside, then decide. The day you skip is usually the day people notice, and even that is quiet.

On price: a pack of probiotic in India runs roughly ₹350 to ₹1,400, which works out at roughly ₹6 to ₹45 a day once you divide by the days it lasts. Divide the MRP by the days, then check whether the count is at end of shelf life. The cheap bottle counted at manufacture may be the expensive one.

Not for medicinal use. Dal first. To compare, see the label.