Paraprobiotics and postbiotics: concepts and potential applications in dairy products

In the last few years, the interest of consumers for healthy products has increased, and the high capacity of probiotics to provide beneficial health effects led to the growing scientific and commercial interests facing the microbial administration as a health promoting strategy. Since the first definition of what is probiotics, the researches about functional foods advanced significantly, at the point of arising new emerging concepts, as paraprobiotics, postbiotics and psychobiotics, to refer to the non-viable microorganisms or metabolites able to provide physiological health benefits to the consumers, or to indicate the therapeutic action related to probiotics. Therefore, in this review those concepts were approached, as well as the potential applications in dairy products, highlighting the main technological advantages compared to the use of probiotics.