Morinaga Milk is featuring its latest postbiotic for mood improvement, LAC-Living+, at the ongoing Vitafoods Asia 2025 trade show in Bangkok, Thailand (September 17–19). Its postbiotic strain, Lactobacillus helveticus MCC1848, is developed to help maintain a positive mood through the gut-brain axis.
Live on the showroom floor, Nutrition Insight discusses the new ingredient with Saki Yamashita, the assistant manager in the Marketing Group for the company’s Functional Food Ingredients Division.
“It’s the highlight of the show,” she says. “This is getting a lot of attention because we just released it. We already have postbiotic ingredients on the market, but this one is quite new.”
“We’re focusing on mood improvement. This ingredient is intended to help provide and maintain a positive mood and give an uplifting feeling.”
Scientific backing
Yamashita says that Morinaga Milk has several clinical studies on LAC-Living+ and more are accumulating.
“As a leading Japanese company, we aim to accumulate more evidence, safety data, and regulatory status in different regions.”
One randomized clinical study included 58 healthy young adults taking LAC-Living+ or a placebo powder for over four weeks. The researchers used a psychological test that evaluates mood states — Profile of Mood States 2.
After four weeks, the participants’ friendliness and visual analogue scale or “relaxed” scores significantly improved. The researchers note these are two indicators of positive mood states.
Moreover, the postbiotic had no significant effects on negative mood states, such as anger, nervousness, or confusion. The researchers did not find adverse effects.
In a follow-up four-week randomized clinical trial with 46 healthy Japanese nursing students, researchers aimed to validate these findings. The participants consumed either LAC-Living+ or a placebo.
Saki Yamashita, Morinaga Milk’s assistant manager in the Marketing Group for the Functional Food Ingredients Division.Although the study did not find the same significant improvement as the previous one, there was a significant improvement in “positive affect” on a different questionnaire. This self-reported survey evaluates positive and negative emotions.
“We’ve proven with a questionnaire that by taking LAC-Living+, you can improve your mood,” Yamashita explains.
“In the coming years, we’d like to share more data about this new ingredient and also show more final product examples you can refer to in the market.”
Product applications
As a heat-killed ingredient, the postbiotic has a longer shelf life and is easy to formulate. Yamashita says it can be incorporated into different types of applications, such as foods, beverages, and snacks.
“In Japan, we already have various beverages like carbonated drinks, non-alcoholic drinks, and even a vinegar drink.”
“Because of its postbiotic character, it’s quite interesting to put it into snacks or daily foods like bakery products, bread, and others.”
She says that Morinaga Milk will be exploring these applications in different regions.
Market expansion
Yamashita says that Morinaga Milk has already built a market for the new product in its homeland, Japan. Now, the company is “building up evidence and showcasing those in final products there.”
“Starting from Japan, we’d like to expand into APAC and then globally to spread the ingredient,” she details.
“We first build up our science, accumulating clinical studies, and then show the ingredient’s safety. We also educate the market by bringing our knowledge to different conferences and exhibitions, helping to nurture the market itself.”
Yamashita concludes: “That’s also our company’s purpose — to bring these ingredients to market.”
Earlier this year, the company won the Vitafoods Innovation Award for Cognitive and Emotional Health ingredients at the European trade show for its probiotic MCC1274. Yamashita told us this is the first single Bifidobacteria strain in the world that showed it could improve cognitive function.
