Scientists Found a Way to Make Soy Milk More Nutritious — and It Starts With Bees

Key Points

• Researchers identified a bumblebee-derived  Lactococcus lactis  strain that can naturally increase vitamin B2 levels in fermented soy milk, helping close a key nutritional gap in plant-based milks.

• A new droplet-based screening method lets scientists analyze millions of microbes in hours, accelerating the search for beneficial bacteria.

• The strain performs well in soy milk but struggles in lower-protein plant milks such as oat and almond; adding protein could improve results.

The humble bumblebee may hold the answer to making more nutritious plant-based milks. And not just for its pollinating capabilities.

Researchers at the DTU National Food Institute in Denmark recently published findings on a new technique to identify bacteria capable of boosting vitamin B2 levels in soy milk during fermentation. As their study, published in the journal  LWT – Food Science and Technology , stated, their most promising candidate came from bees.

As the authors  explained in a statement  and in their paper, plant-based milks generally contain fewer vitamins and minerals than cow's milk, and vitamin B2, also known as riboflavin, is often almost entirely missing. Because the human body can't make riboflavin on its own, it's important to get it through what you eat. That's why you'll often find products "fortified" with it. However, rather than adding it later, fermentation can build it in naturally. But this requires finding the right bacteria for the job. Hence, the bees.

The researchers explained that they collected gut microbes from seven wild bumblebees captured near Silkeborg, Denmark, because these bees have constant contact with plants, which, the team added, means their guts are already stocked with microorganisms adapted to plant-based environments.

"Bumblebees live close to plants, and their guts contain many microorganisms that are already adapted to plant-based environments," Hang Xiao, a postdoctoral fellow and author of the study, said. "That is why it was interesting for us to test whether we could find bacteria in bumblebees capable of producing vitamin B2 in soya drinks."

Finding those bacteria required a clever workaround, not just because bee guts are already a pretty teeny-tiny thing to study. According to the authors, standard lab methods for identifying useful microbes are slow and tend to miss rare strains buried within a larger bacterial community. But the DTU team found a way to test millions of bacterial cells in just a few hours — a process that would have taken months using conventional approaches.

Related: US Beekeepers Are Seeing a Surge in Bee Deaths, and It Could Hit Your Wallet

"Unlike conventional agar plate-based methods, we encapsulated the bee gut bacteria in microscopic droplets so that each droplet contained only one bacterium," Xiao said. "In this way, the individual bacterium could be analyzed at ultra-high speed, enabling us to screen millions of bacterial cells within just a few hours."

Soy milk's naturally cloudy color posed another hurdle, as it interfered with the measurements required to detect riboflavin production. The team developed a clearer version of "soy medium" to serve as a stand-in for regular soy, yielding more accurate results. Bacteria that produced the most riboflavin were selected and subjected to additional rounds of testing. After five rounds, one strain rose to the top: Lactococcus lactis, which produced up to 1.23 mg per liter of riboflavin across three commercial soy milk brands. The team found that it continued to produce the vitamin even in products already fortified with high levels of riboflavin.

Perhaps most promising is that the team found the bacterium could ferment a wide range of sugars, meaning it could one day work in other plant milks as well.

For now, however, the team found that it underperformed with rice, oat, and most almond milks, likely because those products don't contain enough protein to support fermentation. But the researchers believe blending those milks with additional plant protein could help.

Related: This Nonalcoholic Drink Serves Up to 59% of a Key Mood-Boosting Vitamin

Either way, they now have a much easier way to screen for bacteria, which will speed up future studies on how we can naturally get more of this important vitamin without having to add it as a supplement.

"Our research shows that it is possible to screen entire microbial communities directly and rapidly," Claus Heiner Bang-Berthelsen, an associate professor at the university and the corresponding author, added. "This can make the development of new starter cultures faster and more targeted."

Oh yeah, go thank a bumblebee for saving us once again, too.

What is vitamin B2?

Vitamin B2 (riboflavin) is an essential nutrient your body relies on to break down carbohydrates, fats, and proteins into usable energy. It also plays a role in maintaining healthy skin, eyes, and nerve function, and helps support normal cell growth. Because your body can’t store large amounts of it, you need a steady supply from your diet. And most plant-based milks contain little to none, unless they’re fortified, which is why it’s always worth checking the label.
Common sources of vitamin B2:

• Dairy products

• Eggs

• Lean meats

• Leafy greens

• Nuts

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