A young scientist has developed a new food supplement combining natural ingredients from traditional foods. The supplement is intended for people who care about a healthy lifestyle and can be part of a balanced diet.
The newly opened Centre for Applied Research and Innovation at Sofia University offers 25 young scientists each semester the opportunity to create applied innovations in the fields of medicine and healthy nutrition. The young scientist Valentin Tsochev and the Centre's team developed a combination of a polyphenol antioxidant extracted from red wine and a strain of lactic acid bacteria found in traditional Bulgarian pickles. The ingredients are part of a food supplement that can be included in a balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle.
"I am glad that together with my colleagues we managed to create a formula that unites traditional Bulgarian foods and modern science. We are continuing our research in this direction. And we want to achieve results not through medicines with side effects that condemn patients to long-term dependence, but through purely natural products." So said Valentin Tsochev recently, adding: "If we think about it, at the beginning of the 20th century Bulgaria had 6 times more centenarians per capita than the USA, because people consumed clean foods. In a sense, the bacterium found in Bulgarian pickles, as well as the antioxidant of red wine, were part of the traditional Bulgarian table. Today our innovation from the Centre for Applied Research has its roots precisely in these native traditions. The principle is the same, because each tablet contains 75 mg of trans-resveratrol (an antioxidant that can be extracted from 50 bottles of red wine) and one billion lactic acid bacteria with beneficial properties, which are concentrated in one litre of pickle juice."
The innovative Bulgarian company "ProViotic" began working with the young scientist Valentin Tsochev and, since September this year, has been producing his innovation as a food supplement in tablet form. The company is already conducting a study on people with high blood pressure and excessive levels of bad cholesterol. "ProViotic" believes that old Bulgarian recipes have great potential for solving many of our health problems without side effects. Modern science emphasises the good results and removes the undesirable ones that come with practising some Bulgarian traditions. For example, to take in the high amount of trans-resveratrol found in the new tablets, one would have to drink around 50 bottles of red wine in a single day. That is practically impossible. But today just one tablet, containing no alcohol, can deliver the beneficial antioxidant. "ProViotic" works with scientists from Harvard and Nobel Prize laureates such as Prof. Barry Marshall, and it is clear how this type of innovation can be a competitive product on all the world's pharmaceutical markets, including the USA, Canada, France, England and Japan.