Behind the Ingredients - Prebiotics

Think of prebiotics as food for the good gut flora. We all have a bunch of bacteria in our gut. Some good, some not so good. The ratio of the good and bad is largely dependent on what we eat, and is also heavily influenced by genetics also. This is important to note, as our gut acts as a second brain in a way. You may have heard this statement flung around from different people who drop it randomly into conversations, but honestly what does it even mean? And even when I first heard that I was thinking "Uhhhh. sorry, what?" But turns out that our gut actually does have a bunch of neurons (500 million, which is wild), which is DIRECTLY linked to the brain through our nervous system. I won't delve into it now because it is a whole other topic in itself, but essentially there are studies being performed at the mo that show that mental health and our wellbeing is also directly linked to the health of our gut, which stems from our microbiome. 

It's mind-blowing, and when I get really deep in that research hole, I think "I'm only eating whole foods from now on" but life isn't like that, so that's why we felt that having the gut health element in our drink was so important. Making health and wellness accessible to everyone in a delicious drink that is super refreshing, and as an alternative to a less healthy soda. So why didn't we use probiotics then? The reason is 3 fold:

1. The biggest reason is that our prebiotics help your own gut flora (bugs) thrive, rather than introducing new strains that compete for space in your tum. When you introduce new strains, they don't just stay forever, instead, they hang around for a bit, a few hours maybe, and then your own flora take over again. It changes with the time of day, the food we are eating, and how healthy we are. Our gut is living and ever-evolving. Long story short; by using prebiotics, we are helping to feed YOUR OWN good bugs, and starve the bad ones. So ultimately this can lead to better overall health.

2. Our prebiotics help slow down digestion, which means that if you drink Soochi while eating, then your body is supported to uptake higher vitamin and mineral digestion. Equally, there are New Zealand Food Standards approved claims (incredibly hard to achieve this), that state with the amount of prebiotics in our drink, you reduce the uptake of fat and sugar from food. We don't publicly state this as we do not want to go down the diet route, and it is not what we stand for. We exist to uplift and support peoples wellbeing; to improve health and wellness. We do not want to confuse our messaging to inadvertently have people feel like they should feel guilted into buying, or like they need to lose weight.

3. We are conscious of the effect of refrigeration on carbon emissions so we had to make a drink that could be left out of the fridge. In doing this, we reduce fuel emissions during transport, electricity requirements, warehousing, and carbon emissions from the increased energy use. We absolutely look at every way that we can be doing better for our collective future. It's part of our ethos of being kind, so we use this lens on all our major decisions for our company.