Prebiotics - Teeccino

What are prebiotics?

Prebiotics are nutrients that help support good digestive health by nourishing probiotics, the microorganisms that live in your digestive tract and positively affect your health in many ways.

Many prebiotics are soluble fibers as well as other non-caloric compounds that are not digested in your stomach or small intestines and thus don’t contribute calories to your diet. Instead, they arrive in the colon ready for your microbiota to get busy fermenting.

Not all soluble fibers are prebiotics. For a substance to be called a prebiotic, studies must show that it is utilized by the gut microorganisms to produce a beneficial health effect. These days, many products are claiming they’re prebiotic because the FDA hasn’t regulated the term yet. However, brands like Teeccino that want to be sure their health benefits are real, include scientifically-researched ingredients with proven prebiotic effects on the microbiome.

How prebiotics differ from probiotics

Probiotics are living organisms and prebiotics are their nourishment. Think your body versus the food you eat. Probiotics are active in your gut performing a zillion different functions that affect your health. Prebiotics are much simpler in that they just keep your probiotics happy and functioning at their optimal level by providing the substrate probiotics need to thrive and keep your gut in top shape.

Teeccino delivers prebiotic inulin in every cup

Every cup of Teeccino is naturally prebiotic due to its inulin that extracts from chicory and dandelion roots during brewing or steeping. Inulin is a prebiotic soluble fiber found in many common foods such as wheat, garlic, artichokes, sunchokes (Jerusalem artichokes) and raisins albeit in small quantities. However, chicory and dandelion – two of Teeccino’s ingredients – contain much higher amounts of inulin.

Teeccino increases your daily intake of prebiotics

Our modern diet provides us with only around 1 – 3 grams of inulin a day, but our ancestors ate 15-20 grams daily because they ate more roots and tubers where inulin concentration is greatest. The good news for Teeccino drinkers is that a substantial amount of inulin from chicory (between 390-650 mg in each cup depending on brew method) is naturally extracted with hot water during brewing.

Inulin extract is now a popular food additive that is found in all kinds of foods like nutrition bars, ice cream, yogurt and bread as well as nutritional supplements. You’ll see it called “chicory fiber”, or “chicory extract” in the ingredients. Unlike these other food brands that add commercially extracted inulin to their products, Teeccino’s inulin is completely natural asit comes straight from chicory and dandelion roots during brewing.

What's in this stuff?

Teeccino’s creator, Caroline, began following research on prebiotics back in the mid-90’s after she first launched Teeccino. She got a phone call from a woman who exclaimed that she was in her 80’s and after starting to drink Teeccino, she was regular for the first time in her life. She wanted to know, “What’s in that stuff?” Next her doctor called. “What’s in that stuff,” he asked. He’d been treating his patient for over 30 years and she had never been regular until she started drinking Teeccino.

Caroline was mystified but she soon discovered ‘what’s in the stuff’. Of course it turned out to be chicory root with its naturally high content of inulin. Inulin as well as other prebiotics are so beneficial to the gut that they promote good elimination by nourishing probiotics, especially the lactobaccilus and bifidobacteria.

Prebiotic SuperBoost™ increases the health benefits of Teeccino on the gut

Although inulin in Teeccino has always produced great health benefits from its prebiotic effects, the latest research on prebiotics is so exciting that Caroline felt compelled to create new Teeccino blends with an even greater prebiotic effect on the gut. Researching the best prebiotics on the market, she discovered two plant prebiotics that studies show have a superior healthy impact on the gut.

We call our combination, Prebiotic SuperBoost™, a concentrated, plant-based blend of 2 prebiotics, vegan GOS (glucooligosaccharide) and organic XOS (xylooligosaccahride). Teeccino Prebiotic SuperBoost blends deliver 1,000 mg of these two prebiotics to your cup if you brew Teeccino like coffee and 650mg if you steep Teeccino’s tea bags.

XOS is organically derived from corn husks and GOS is enzymatically extracted from sugar in France. Both are non-digestible and thus non-caloric. Studies show that more than 80% of these prebiotics reach the colon where they are utilized by the lactobacilli and bifidobacteria, supporting a thriving population of both probiotics.