The beginning of a new school year often presents mixed emotions for parents. Preparing your child for school can be a stressful time, with joy, excitement and trepidation common feelings. Packing a healthy, nutritious lunchbox can pose challenge (especially for those fussy eaters!). We’ve complied our top tips to help with lunch box stress!

1. Use A Bento Lunch Box
   Bento style lunch boxes are an excellent way to display your child’s food. The various compartments keep food separate, reduce the need for packaging and is visually appealing. Try popcorn, berries, cheese, pretzels, guacamole, savoury muffins and dried fruit.
2. Keep options diverse
   The same old lunch quickly becomes tedious. Keep your child’s lunch box varied and full of variety! We recommend rotating options weekly. Additionally, variety facilitates children’s exposure to a range of tastes, textures and flavours.
3. Seek balance and avoid processed snacks
   Some processed, pre-packaged convenience foods contain excess sodium, sugar and fat to enhance taste. Look out for healthier options high in fruit and vegetable content or wholefood sources (e.g. wholegrains).
4. Use an insulated bag and ice bricks
   Ensure food is stored adequately – use an insulated lunch bag and include ice bricks to keep food cool.

We hope our back to school tips will assist you with lunch box preparation and optimising your child’s nutrition!

Image courtesy of @melb.mum – Instagram.

We have become aware of a number of rumours circulating on social media regarding Yakult and the Coronavirus.

Yakult products are ensured to be safe and of high quality.

Yakult Australia would like to make it clear that Yakult is made in Dandenong, Victoria using only Australian ingredients.

Any statements or comments saying otherwise are incorrect.

Five-time Olympic Gold Medalist, Ian Thorpe AM has joined global leader in probiotics, Yakult as its new Brand Ambassador.

The three year-partnership will see Thorpe promoting Yakult and the positive contribution of the Lactobacillus casei.

Shirota strain found exclusively in Yakult products to intestinal microbiota. The partnership will also demonstrate Yakult’s ongoing commitment to science and continued work investigating the use of bacteria in food, cosmetics and pharmaceutical products, which is at the core of the Yakult company.

Thorpe will feature in a new integrated campaign across TV and online channels, rolling out in January 2020 and the partnership will extend across multiple phases all designed to help consumers understand the role of probiotics in maintaining digestive health.

Mr. Kenji Ono, Managing Director of Yakult Australia “We are delighted to have a trusted name like Ian Thorpe represent Yakult Australia”.
Ian’s longstanding record of personal integrity and excellence in his chosen field fit very well with Yakult’s Corporate philosophy.

Thorpe said, “As an athlete, maintaining my health has always been really important. As a long-time customer of Yakult, even when I was competing, I have seen the benefits of the Shirota strain to my gut health, so I am honoured to have the opportunity to tell the company’s story.”

This media release has also been published by Mumbrella, Marketing Magazine, CMO Magazine, Campaign Brief, B&T.

Have you noticed anything different about our Yakult 10-pack?

After careful consideration, Yakult Australia have made the decision to discontinue the inclusion of single use plastic straws in our 10-packs.

This change comes in response to growing feedback from our valued customers regarding the impact of plastics in the environment.

We understand some consumers may be disappointed by the change. However, we have thought carefully about the user friendliness. We have made changes to resize the tab on the foil cap, making them easier to open. On balance, it was felt that most people would be prepared to accept a small inconvenience for the greater good of our planet.

We also added a ‘straws removed’ statement on our packaging to ensure that members of the Public understood that the straws were not missing by mistake.

We hope that our valued customers will support this sincere initiative to minimise our impact on the environment.

With the New Year well and truly upon us, many will leap into the new decade with the same old cycle of repeating the same feared declarations of New Year’s Resolutions. We all have good intentions for real change, beginning strong and steady. However, this is short lived and majority of us begin to stray away from our new goals, with studies showing that up to 55% of Aussies will not even make it to February before throwing in the towel.

This year will be different. Gut health plays a major role in our overall health and wellbeing. Probiotics have beneficial effects on overall individual health and wellbeing. Probiotics can help you stay on track with your New Year health related goals this year. At Yakult we are here to help you overcome these obstacles with some quick and easy to follow simple resolutions targeted at gut health that you’ll be sure to stick to.

1. Increase your Probiotic Ingestion by taking Yakult Daily
Just one bottle of Yakult or Yakult Light a day will allow you to reap the benefits of 6.5 billion beneficial strains of the Lactobacillus Casei Shirota strain (LcS). This is important to maintaining balance, as these bacteria have benefits linked to health and wellbeing by aiding digestion and immunity, by suppressing harmful bacteria and encouraging the growth of beneficial bacteria.

2. Reduce Stress Levels on your body
Stress can have negative effects on the body, causing an imbalance in the gut bacteria. In addition to reducing the presence of beneficial bacteria, stress can also increase the number of harmful bacteria present in the body.

3. Incorporate more movement into your life
Many New Year’s Resolutions are centered around exhaustive exercise, consider a more sustainable change by simply integrating more movement into your life. This could include going for walks on breaks and taking the stairs instead of the lift. Furthermore, being active has also been linked to increasing bacterial diversity in the gut.

Sticking to New Year’s resolutions is not an easy task, let’s use this new decade to create meaningful and long-term changes in our lives. If you have any questions regarding Yakult, probiotics and evidence regarding this research area, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@yakult.com.au.

As probiotic interest continues to grow, so too does the confusion regarding the role of probiotics. This blog aims to address the misconception that probiotics permanently alter the composition of your gut bacteria and explains how probiotics can be of benefit, including tips for maintaining gut health.

A healthy gut composition is characterised by adequate numbers of beneficial bacteria and increased diversity of bacterial strains. The recent popularity of achieving ‘gut health’, through habits dedicated to improving gut composition, has likely led to the misconception that “probiotics permanently alter your gut bacteria”. The truth is quite the opposite.
Studies have shown that probiotics typically do not take up permanent residence in your gut. But this is not to say that they don’t have the potential to provide a health benefit… because they do!

Probiotics (and the substances they produce) can be of benefit on their journey through your gut by interacting with your immune cells, gut cells and food along the way. Research shows that regular use of a probiotic (i.e. regular exposure to adequate amounts of beneficial bacteria) can help to improve both immune function and digestive health. Many of us may therefore benefit from regular consumption of a probiotic to ensure continual exposure to good bacteria in our digestive system.

There’s a reason why “Every body. Every day” is Yakult’s motto!

You may be thinking: “How else can I ensure my gut is constantly exposed to beneficial bacteria?”. The adoption of healthy lifestyle factors can also help to improve and maintain a healthy gut. Eating plenty of fibre from a variety of food sources (e.g. fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes and wholegrains) will ensure you are feeding a wide variety of beneficial bacteria naturally present in your digestive system. This will support the survival of beneficial bacteria in your gut, encouraging a healthy gut composition in the longer term. Adequate sleep and regular physical activity are also vital as these lifestyle factors can assist to improve gut composition.

Although the pursuit of healthy living should be of upmost priority, today’s busy lifestyles can often lead to unhealthy habits such as poor diet, stress and fatigue which can all impact our gut health. Including a probiotic, such as Yakult, to your daily routine may help to restore digestive balance by providing your gut with consistent exposure to beneficial bacteria every day.

Yakult Australia have launched a Yakult School Holiday Program for the first time this year. The program was initially trialled during the April school holidays and when the program was officially launched later in the year and advertised on our social media pages, it was an absolute success. The Yakult School Holiday Program was fully booked out during July and September/October school holidays, and we have had more than 1600 people visiting us during the school holidays this year.

The School Holiday Program differs from our general tour program.

The focus of this year’s School Holiday Program was the Digestive System and Healthy Eating. This program was designed for early primary-school aged children who would have had some prior understanding of healthy eating and how foods travel in the body.

In the program, we explored how the foods or drinks pass through our digestive system, from our mouth to our large intestines, and what happens to the foods at each organ. As we have about 100 trillion bacteria living in our intestines, it is important for us to achieve a good balance between the beneficial and potential harmful bacteria to ensure that we have a strong immune system. One of the ways we can achieve this is through healthy eating. We then explored the five food groups from the Australia Guide to Healthy Eating and children were asked to create their version of a Healthy Lunchbox based on what they have learned.

Our new mascot – Yakult Man was a big hit amongst our younger audiences when he was featured in our short video to emphasise the important of a healthy and balanced diet. After the video and Yakult sampling, we then introduced a craft activity using empty Yakult bottles – Kokeshi Doll.

We are glad to see that many attendees have enjoyed the program. If you have any feedback for us, please feel free to contact us via our website or send us an email.

For those who have missed out this year, please follow our social media pages – Facebook and Instagram, to find out when the next School Holiday Program is open for bookings.

“Probiotic” is a term used frequently (and loosely) in this era obsessed with gut health. It appears that any fermented food item earns the title “Probiotic”. However, the classification of an actual probiotic is much more specific than this.

For a fermented food item to be classified as a true probiotic it must meet the following criteria:

1. Contain live bacteria
2. Contain enough beneficial bacteria
3. Produce a health benefit

Let’s delve a little deeper into the world of fermented foods so you can shop for probiotics with confidence!

Food manufacturers add live bacteria to create fermented food products through a process known as fermentation. Fermentation is used to make many food and beverage items such as yoghurt, cheese, kimchi, fermented milk, kombucha and kefir.

The presence of potentially beneficial bacteria within these food items imply that they must improve gut health. However, whether or not they improve gut health is largely unknown. Many food and beverage companies rely on this implication to appeal to a growing consumer base who are concerned with digestive health. It is no wonder that the fermented food market is booming right now!

In fact, some fermented food products don’t contain any live bacteria. This is because they undergo common food processing techniques such as pasteurisation, baking, smoking or filtering, which kill beneficial bacteria.

Without adequate research on the amount and type of bacteria within a product, it is impossible to determine whether a fermented food item is in fact a probiotic or merely a fermented food item.

So, to answer the question: “Are all fermented foods a probiotic?”- no, they are not. But this is not to say that all fermented food products are not, or do not, have the potential to be a probiotic. For example, Yakult is a fermented beverage that meets all the requirements of a true probiotic. This is because one 65ml bottle of Yakult:

1. Contains live bacteria
2. Contains 6.5 billion beneficial bacteria
3. Has a proven health benefit

Next time you are shopping, check that the fermented food item meets all three criteria and be self-assured that you are choosing a true probiotic!

It’s easy to feel inspired to get active in Spring and Summer; the longer, sunnier days provide the perfect setting for games of cricket in the park, swimming at the beach or late evening walks. The thought of taking shorts or swimwear out of winter storage can be a big motivator for taking extra interest in our physical fitness too. But what about staying active in Autumn and Winter when the days become shorter and colder?

With so many indoor sports and activities available to us, it’s good to know that there are many options to help us stay active when the weather outside is less than welcoming.

What do you do to stay active when it is cold and wet outside?  Do you play an indoor sport, or take a gym class? Do you visit an indoor heated pool or walk on a home treadmill while watching your favourite TV show?

Staying active, eating well and looking after your mental health are all important things to include as part of a healthy lifestyle, and don’t forget to include probiotics like Yakult in your diet to look after your gut health too.