Safety and quality of bacterially fermented functional foods and beverages: a mini review

Bacteria have been employed widely in the food and beverage industry, with evolving dimensions in recent years. Proteases derived from lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are useful in the production of fermented functional beverages and are of particular use in conditioning their shelf life, nutritional content, flavour, and texture quality, thus making fermented foods and beverages functional and therapeutic. This review focuses on bacteria, especially protease-producing LAB used in food processing, and their usefulness in the production of functional foods and beverages. A case study of oat beverages was briefly explored due to its popularity. The safety and quality importance of the food products were also considered with a few recommendations.