As most of you are aware, I have long maintained that most products promoted and sold as beneficial to health by virtue of the "probiotics" they contain, are pretty much worthless for treating MC. Note that I do not claim that all probiotics are worthless, just most of them. In some circumstances I believe that the correct probiotic mix might be very beneficial — the problem is that we will never be able to buy that product from a manufacturer, because we each require our own special formulation, and the manufacturers are incapable of responding to that need. Therefore, if we happen to accidentally discover a probiotic that actually works for us, we are the exception, not the rule, and we can consider ourselves to be lucky.
But the subject of this post is not probiotics in general, it's about probiotic drinks and supplements that are currently flooding the grocery stores. These products have become so popular that some manufacturers are even considering adding probiotics to various food items such as bread, energy bars, snack foods, and anything else they can think of that might benefit from the advertising hype that gullible, probiotic-craving consumers fall for. If they have their way, eventually we might not be able to buy any processed foods that do not contain the very thing that we try to maintain sanitary conditions in order to avoid, namely bacteria.
The problem of course is that most of these products are worthless, as far as probiotic benefits are concerned.It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that as difficult as it can be to keep the bacteria in dedicated probiotic supplements alive and active, and then get them past the acidic environment in the stomach (designed to kill bacteria) in sufficient quantities to actually have any beneficial effect, the odds of them surviving in various mainstream food products, without any special handling restrictions, are rather slim. And finally, someone has done a study that reveals the obvious. A study at the University College London shows that 7 out of 8 such products simply don't deliver what they claim. Needless to say, that's an extremely disappointing performance level, but anyone who is surprised at that revelation hasn't been paying attention. According to the article at the link below:
Why claims for good bacteria drinks may be difficult to stomachProbiotic drinks and supplements are likely to have no health benefits, according to a study.
Six in 10 British households buy probiotics regularly. Their use has grown significantly in recent years, led by brands such as Yakult and Actimel.
The products claim to introduce “good” bacteria to the gut to help with a range of conditions. But scientists at University College London put eight probiotic products through three tests and found only one passed all of them.
Tex
I noticed a bad typo in my post. It wasn't 1 out of 8 products that failed to deliver what the label claimed — it was 7 out of 8. 
