Probiotic plant-based yogurts from common beans (phaseolus vulgaris): physicochemical properties, bioactive peptides, and health-promoting activities before and after in vitro digestion

Soybean and common beans (navy, great northern, pinto, and red kidney) were used to prepare plant-based milks and their corresponding probiotic yogurts. Fermentation significantly enhanced textural properties of all bean milks, particularly in great northern yogurt, which also presented the highest whiteness along with the lowest syneresis (3.20%). Pinto yogurt had the greatest free radical scavenging activity (60.61 g/mL) and total phenolic content (2,736.92 mg/L). Total peptide content considerably increased in all fermented samples, highest in red kidney yogurt, as confirmed by SDS–PAGE. After gastrointestinal simulation, yogurt digestates showed improved bioactivity over bean milks, including higher phenolics (up to 6,869.84 mg/L in pinto), radical quenching (greatest in pinto with 112.76 g/mL), and antihypertensive activity (29.75% in red kidney). Viable probiotics remained above 10⁶ CFU/g after 28 days. These findings suggest that bioactive-rich, bean-based functional yogurts can have potential health-promoting effects on the digestive system, targeting hypertension while serving as carriers of probiotics.