THE STORY AND THE SCIENCE BEHIND
THE YUMMINESS AND TUMMY GOODNESS
Gut Health is a hot topic, arguably one of the most exciting areas of medical science. You won’t be surprised that gut health impacts your digestive health, that’s a no-brainer, but now it known that your gut health also impacts the strength of your immune system, how quickly you recover after sport and even how happy you feel… So we’ve gone all out (partly ‘cos Ann has always had gut issues) and created amazingly tasty Active Cultures bars to help YOU (and Ann) LOVE YOUR GUT.
They’re packed full of everything your gut needs to stay happy and healthy.
- Billions of active cultures
- 5g of prebiotic fibre
- 100% of your daily Vitamin B12 & B5
- Calcium
- Natural ingredients
- Vegan
- Gluten free
- Palm oil free
But how do these scrummy snacks keep your gut in peak perkiness? Allow us to explain (time for the white lab coats and big plastic glasses)…
First, let’s talk about the G word
Your gut includes everywhere from your mouth to your bum.
And it plays a huge role in keeping our immune system and digestive health perky. Your gut health can even impact your mental wellbeing.
We think gut health is the most exciting area of medical science.
How's that then?
It’s where 70% of our body’s defensive immune cells hang out. So if your gut’s not happy, you’re more likely to get sick.
A healthy gut helps reduce cortisol (a stress hormone), and 90% of the body’s serotonin (the happy hormone) is produced in the gut, so keeping your gut healthy is good for your mental health too.
And better digestive health helps speed up recovery after sport, reduce the risk of heart attacks, diabetes and even Parkinson’s disease!
Our gut is also known as our ‘second brain’ because of the way it communicates with the brain directly and all our other vital organs. Maybe that’s why we have ‘gut’ instincts.
And now that you know a bit about your gut, and how important it is, you'll notice the big "LOVE YOUR GUT" stamp on our new Active Cultures bars, which we've made specially to help look after your gut health!
The tale of Active Cultures
If you didn’t already know, the Perkier brand was born in 2015, after our co-founder Ann found that she couldn’t eat gluten, wheat or dairy, so she started making our tasty, nutritious and ethical snacks in her kitchen.
But in 2020, she took things one step healthier…
“I’ve suffered from IBS for years, so we originally set out to make Perkier bars and breakfasts free from all the things that were causing it to flare up.
But to really boost our gut health and overall wellbeing, we wanted to create bars packed with probiotics aka active cultures, and prebiotics the food they love to eat!”
And that was that – we made the UK’s first ever range of probiotic snack bars – a plant based, dairy free alternative to health shots, drinks or yoghurts! BTW Ann is smiling in the photo, not doubled over with tummy ache, now she has an Active Culture bar a day!
Say hello to our Active Cultures bars…
There’s no point cramming a load of gut-boosting goodness into snack bars if they’re going to taste a bit bleurgh. So we didn’t. In fact, we ramped up the deliciousness so much, that you’d never guess how healthy they are.
Madagascan Vanilla with
Dark Chocolate
The creamy, mellow taste of vanilla and nuts, with a rich and velvety dark chocolate base.
Blueberry with Dark
Chocolate
All our usual nuttiness, combined with juicy berries and dipped in real dark chocolate.
A closer look at our gut health
There are 30-50 trillion bacteria, fungi and viruses in our gut which live together in harmony (except for the odd argument – and that’s when you’ll feel sick).
On average, we have around 2kg of gut bacteria in our bodies – heavier than the average brain!
Probiotics are live bacteria that you can eat to top-up the good bacteria in your gut. These can be found in foods like live yoghurts, sourdough bread and fermented foods like kimchi.
Prebiotics act like fertilisers, helping the good bacteria in your gut to grow. You can find these in chicory root, raw garlic and onions, and oats too.
And rather than you having to eat a raw onion sourdough sandwich every day, we've carefully designed our Active Cultures bars to contain BOTH probiotics and prebiotics, a combination known as "synbiotics".
So what’s in the bars?
We’ve worked closely with world experts in gut health to create two absolute nutritional powerhouses – snack bars that contain prebiotics, probiotics, 100% of your daily Vitamin B5 & B12, calcium, and 5g of plant protein.
And every ingredient in our bars is ALL NATURAL!
Probiotics
Each bar contains two precision types of friendly active cultures (another name for probiotics). There are BILLIONS of these in each bar, and they’re scientifically proven to reach the gut alive for the best gut-boosting results.
To help these probiotics on their journey through your gut, we’ve microencapsulated them - using advanced technology to wrap them in protective shells - making them 1000x more effective at reaching your gut alive than the dairy cultures found in yoghurts and kefir. Find out more about probiotics.
Prebiotics
The bars contain 5g of chicory fibre, packed with prebiotics that our good-gut bacteria love to eat.
A cool thing about prebiotics is that they bypass your small intestine and head straight to the colon to create an even healthier gut. Dig deeper into the science.
Vitamin B12
Vitamin B12 Just like our Vitamin-Packed Immune Range, our Active Cultures bars contain Vitamin B12, which is essential for plant-lovers and vegans, because it’s normally found in animal products.
Doctors say that being vitamin B12 deficient can lead to some serious illnesses years down the line.
Vitamin B5
This one helps you convert the food you eat into energy, and helps to keep much of your body healthy, including your skin, hair, eyes and nervous system – as well as your gut, obviously. B5 makes red blood cells too, which carry oxygen around your body. Read more on Vit B5.
