Digestive Advantage Now Owned by Schiff

I've written about Digestive Advantage many times in the past five years. It makes a brand of probiotic that is aimed specifically at those of use with lactose intolerance. No need to look for all the past links, but I did a long post filled with comments from you in Digestive Advantage Update in 2007. Most of what was said there should still hold today.

Here's a cold slap of reality to the face. I remember what I wrote about Digestive Advantage in 2007. And in 2006 and in 2009 and 2010. Not only that, I went over and over and over that material when I put together my collection of blog pieces, Planet Lactose: The Best of The Blog.

[Stop now. Put everything aside. Go and order the book, either in print form or an electronic version. Really. It'll put all this great information into one place for you. End of commercial.]

Back to reality. No matter how new and burned into my brain this info is: for most of you out there it's old and buried and never seen.

One of the big pieces of news that I discovered when I resumed the blog recently was that Lactagen has stopped being manufactured I automatically assumed that everybody would know about the possibility of switching to Digestive Advantage. Except, of course, you don't. You needed to write me to ask.

OK, time to correct that huge oversight.

Digestive Advantage.

Schiff® Digestive Advantage products contain BC30 probiotics, a hardy strain of Bacillus coagulans -- these "friendly" bacteria, or probiotics, help your body maintain a balance of bacteria -- supporting your digestive system. Unlike some other probiotics, BC30 survives passage through harsh stomach acids and doesn't need to be refrigerated, so there's no worrying about whether you're getting the live cells you need.

Schiff® Digestive Advantage comes in four different formulas: Intensive Bowel Support, Lactose Defense Formula, Gas Defense Formula and Daily Constipation Formula, so you can choose the Digestive Advantage product that's right for you. Click on any image below to learn more about that Digestive Advantage Formula.

And more promotional copy:

Digestive Advantage® Lactose Defense Formula
No Need to Take With Every Meal!

Digestive Advantage® Lactose Defense Formula does not have to be taken with every meal because it combines lactase enzyme with probiotics to help break down lactose hours after reaching the digestive tract.

Digestive Advantage® Lactose Defense Formula helps prevent the GAS, BLOATING and OCCASIONAL DIARRHEA that many people with lactose intolerance experience after eating foods containing dairy.

Available at over 40,000 retailers nationwide including Rite Aid, Walgreen's, WalMart, CVS/Pharmacies, Albertsons, K-Mart, Kroger, Safeway and online at Amazon.com, Drugstore.com.com and DoctorVicks.com.

Other Ingredients: Vegetarian capsule (hypromellose, water, chlorophylin, titanium dioxide), Microcrystalline cellulose, Di-calcium phosphate, Stearic acid, Silidon dioxide.

Contains milk and soy.

Let me repeat: Contains milk and soy. I don't understand that, and I don't see either in the list of ingredients, but I take warnings seriously. The flip side is that you have no reason to take Digestive Advantage unless you are planning to eat dairy products, which will contain a zillion times more milk in them. It's only the soy warning that a very small number of you have to worry about.

The other piece of news in that information is that the huge multinational powerhouse pharmaceutical company Schiff bought Gananden, the parent company of Digestive Advantage, back in June of 2011. You can read the press release for more info.

The purchase also gave Schiff rights to Sustenex, which uses the Gananden BC30 probiotics. I've written about Sustenex in the past as well.

Is the sale to Schiff good news for us? Probably. Digestive Advantage now has the muscle of Schiff's billions in marketing, distribution, and grabbing of shelf space in stores to make it more visible. There's always a flip side. As a very tiny and unimportant piece of an empire, good sales aren't enough. Big companies frequently buy out promising little companies and then eliminate them if they don't turn into huge profit centers. The good news prevails for now. Probiotics are hot. Drug Store News reported favorably on the sale, noting that "The probiotics category is presently growing at more than 20% on an annualized basis, according to Nutrition Business Journal." As long as that's true, expect to be able to easily find Digestive Advantage conveniently on local shelves.

And if and when Lactagen ever comes back onto the market, it will find deep pockets to compete against. That's also either good news or bad, depending on which since you sit on. My side is that the more choices and the more products consumers have, the bigger their advantage is.