Local physician creates new health drink

Asheville may be a beer town, but Ashevillians love their locally made, healthy beverages too. This week, physician and nutritionist, Alan S. Baumgarten, will present a new thirst-quencher to local beverage-enthusiasts: a drinkable probiotic supplement called H2PRO Immune Health. The lightly flavored product will be available at Katuah Market’s grand opening on Saturday, Feb. 22.

Baumgarten got his start working as a public health nutritionist. Since then, he has established a family medicine and nutrition practice at Asheville Family Health Center in North Asheville and has directed the Nutrition and Support Team at Mission Hospital. For Baumgarten, creating his own healthy product felt like a natural next step in his career. Highlighting probiotics was a similarly obvious choice.

“I’ve been working with probiotics for a long time in my practice,” says Baumgarten. “I have found that patients are responsive to [probiotics] in so many different ways. … We commonly identify the heart and the brain as the center of our functioning, and of course they are incredibly critical organs, but the gastrointestinal tract has so much to do with our well-being and how we feel.” H2PRO also has glutamine, zinc, and vitamins C and D listed among its ingredients.

For now, the drink comes in acai berry flavor as well as flavorless, but Baumgarten is hoping to expand those offerings. “Our approach,” says Baumgarten, “is to focus on what we are calling a ‘mature flavor’ where the flavoring is extremely light and the sweetness is extremely light, and we think that will have appeal to a broader spectrum for the adult population.” He adds that the probiotics and micronutrients are located in the bottle’s cap, and that customers will add that mixture to the water, shake it up and drink.

Baumgarten says offering his product at Katuah Market is only the beginning. “Our goal is to take this product far and wide, and in very short order we’ll be working with some other markets in the area and then in the region.”

Learn more at http://www.h2probiotics.com.

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About Lea McLellan
Lea McLellan is a freelance writer who likes to write stories about music, art, food, wellness and interesting locals doing interesting things.

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