BL baffles brains

Danone is running a TV ad for its new yogurt called Activia.

The commercial features a husband and wife (both about 40 years of age) doing what appears to be some type of mating dance in their kitchen while eating yogurt lustfully. The announcer tells me that this yogurt is the only one on the market to contain the probiotic culture BL™ and like the dancing old-people, I should “take the Activia 14-day challenge and feel the difference”.

…end of sales pitch.

Then what?

If I eat this yogurt for 14 days, what sort of difference am I supposed to feel? Danone doesn’t say. Is the probiotic culture BL™ anything more than BS, or will it confer some real positive benefit on me… like the stamina needed to dance with 40-year-old women? I checked out the Activia website to find out.

Generally, I don’t give in to such baiting tactics used by marketers to get me interested in a product. I have never asked my doctor about Celebrex. I have never typed “www.yaris.ca” into my web browser to find out what Uncle Yaris was all about (although he did appear to have some sweet dance moves). In this case however, I made an exception.

According to Danone, BL™ is its own brand of bifidobacterium lactis, which is a class of naturally-occuring bacteria thought to “contribute to protein and vitamin metabolism, exert anti-microbial activity and possibly act on intestinal transit”. Now the other kinds of natural bacteria that you normally find in yogurt apparently also do the same things, except that bifidobacteria lactae supposedly survive longer in the intestinal tract, and therefore amplify the benefits that run-of-the-mill yogurt bacteria would confer only in limited fashion.

Fair enough. So Activia yogurt might be good for your poop-chute.

At least this gives me some idea as to why the TV add was so hush-hush about the “difference” that I would feel if I ate this yogurt for 2 weeks. Yogurt and poo probably don’t mix well in the mind of the average consumer.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go eat some chocolate pudding and dance around my kitchen.