Polydextrose

A synthetic soluble fibre: glucose polymerised at random into a tangled molecule, with sorbitol capping the chains and a little citric acid esterified in. The EU lists it as E1200.

Ordinary starch is glucose joined the same way every time, so one enzyme handles the lot. Polydextrose is glucose joined every possible way at once — 1,2, 1,3, 1,4 and 1,6 links in no order, with 1,6 predominating — and no human enzyme has a shape that fits a polymer with no pattern to it. So most of it reaches the colon. Because it is awkward to ferment, bacteria work through it slowly and incompletely along the whole length of the colon rather than dumping it all at the first bend, which is why it makes less gas per gram than inulin and tolerates to far higher intakes. The fermentation yields short-chain fatty acids including butyrate and lowers faecal pH. What it does to Bifidobacterium specifically is less consistent than the category marketing implies — in the one detailed human microbiota study it raised butyrate producers and lowered the Lactobacillus–Enterococcus group, which is not the tidy picture the word prebiotic paints.

Reaches the colon largely undigested and is slowly, partially fermented by gut bacteria. In CORE, at 50 mg, its working job is physical — giving the strip body and carrying the Bifidobacterium lactis.

Everyone taking CORE gets it, and nobody should be choosing CORE because of it. If you want polydextrose to do what it did in the trials, you want a measured 8–12 g in a drink, which is a different product entirely. Nobody needs to avoid it at this amount; people with a low tolerance for fermentable fibre should simply count their grams elsewhere.

Nothing to time and nothing to separate. The strip goes on the tongue and dissolves, no water needed, which is the entire point of the format. If you want a fibre intake, eat it or measure it — do not expect a 180 mg strip to supply one.

Nothing. Fifty milligrams of a fermentable fibre produces no bowel change, no gas and no microbiome shift that any available method would detect. That is not a criticism of the product, which stands or falls on the strain and the format; it is simply the honest answer for this ingredient at this amount.

Polydextrose is authorised in the EU as E1200, and EFSA's 2021 re-evaluation (EFSA Journal 19(1):e06363) concluded there is no need for a numerical ADI and no safety concern at reported uses. In the US it is not yet formally inside the dietary fibre definition: FDA has said it intends to propose adding polydextrose, and meanwhile exercises enforcement discretion for declaring it as dietary fibre and for a caloric value of 1 kcal/g. Human data, in order of size. Ibarra and colleagues (Nutrients, 2019) randomised 192 adults with functional constipation to 4, 8 or 12 g a day or placebo for two weeks: colonic transit time, the primary endpoint, did not improve, and the authors noted the recruited population was not sufficiently constipated — baseline transit 42 hours and 8.7 bowel movements a week. Duncan and colleagues (Nutrients, 2018) gave 8 or 12 g a day to 128 adults with chronic constipation for four weeks: no reduction in transit time, and no improvement in stool frequency or consistency in any group, with movement only on two symptom subscores. Costabile and colleagues (British Journal of Nutrition, 2012) gave 8 g a day in a double-blind crossover feeding study and found increased Ruminococcus intestinalis and Clostridium clusters I, II and IV, alongside a fall in the faecal Lactobacillus–Enterococcus group. Not supported at any dose: weight loss, or treatment of constipation or IBS. Not supported at 50 mg: any prebiotic effect whatsoever.