L’Amibiote: a new ally for your microbiota

A golden and crunchy crust, a meltingly soft crumb and the smell of bread straight out of the oven… At first glance, l’Amibiote looks like every other baguette you may find on bakery counters. But the crust hides ingredients with numerous nutritional benefits that distinguish this bread from others.  The first specific feature is its content in plant fibre. While standard white bread mainly contains starch and cellulose, l’Ambiote is made using seven soluble and insoluble plant fibres (see insert below).
These qualities result from several years of research led by Joël Doré, Research Director at the Joint Research Unit for Food and Gut Microbiology for Human Health (MICALIS) and Scientific Director of the MetaGenoPolis¹ Unit at the INRAE Île-de-France–Jouy-en-Josas Research Centre. This “super-baguette”, developed in partnership with Bridor, should thus enable consumers to enrich their fibre intake in terms of both quality and quantity². L’Amibiote supplies 11 grams of fibre per 100 grams of bread (more than 50% of which is in soluble form), as opposed to 4 grams in a traditional baguette.  

L’Amibiote achieves a score of A on the Nutri-Score scale

11 grams fibre per 100 grams bread

This newcomer also has another advantage: patience. It ferments slowly thanks to its yeast content. This controlled development, and its composition, thus give it specific nutritional qualities. L’Amibiote achieves a score of A on the Nutri-Score scale³. And it is not just a question of marketing promises; to confirm its effects on human health, it underwent numerous scientific tests⁴ which demonstrated that eating 150 grams of this multi-fibre bread contributed to the quality of the gut microbiota (see insert below).
“Consuming a variety of fibres is a reliable means to act on the microbiota and foster the development of different bacteria” explains Joël Doré. At the same time, its nutritional qualities were also highlighted: it lowered cholesterol levels and improved insulin sensitivity. The mechanism underlying these results has not yet been described, but Doré nevertheless points out that the positive action on regulating cholesterol exerted by the beta-glucan in l’Ambiote has been widely documented; he hypothesises that by acting on the microbiota this fibre-enriched bread potentiates this effect. With its crunchy crust and promising results, Joël Doré is extremely proud of l’Ambiote, because “if it becomes widely available to consumers, such a product with proven health benefits could procure a true impact on society!”

^{1 MetaGenoPolis: unique in Europe, this unit assembles four innovative platforms which serve the medical, scientific and industrial communities for their studies on the microbiota.  
2 The French Nutrition and Health Programme recommends consuming 30 grams fibre per day.
3 Nutri-Score: this scoring system for foods is designed to facilitate our understanding of their energy and nutritional values. Using a letter and a colour that range from green/A (the best score) to red/E (the lowest), it can inform consumers about the nutritional quality of food products. .
4 Study conducted in 40 volunteers by the CRNH  (Human Nutrition Research Centre, Rhône-Alpes) in partnership with INRAE. The CRNH studied impacts on health and Metagenopolis the effects on the microbiota.}