Yeast extract: how it is made and what it is used for
What it found
Yeast extract is rich in amino acids, vitamins and minerals and is widely used to add flavour to food and in animal feed.
The authors say its wider use in medicine and cosmetics is still limited.
What they found
Animal and lab studies
Animal feed
Adding yeast extract to poultry feed strengthened the birds' immunity and reduced disease. In turkeys, it enhanced growth and immunity by stimulating oxidative burst activity of heterophilic cells and increasing red blood cell count, uric acid level and blood hemoglobin content.
Studies in people and animals
Skin and medicine
In a test on healthy people, a formulation with yeast extract plus vitamins A, C and E caused no detectable skin irritation after several days and reduced skin roughness and increased water content of the stratum corneum. In a mouse model of cigarette smoking, oral yeast extract significantly reduced pro-inflammatory cells in the lung alveoli.
Other findings
What it contains
Yeast extract is made mainly from waste brewer's yeast and is rich in nucleotides, proteins, amino acids, sugars and trace elements. One sample made by mechanical crushing had protein content as high as 64.1% and fat content of only 1.32%.
Nucleic acid and gout
Yeast has a nucleic acid content of up to 15%, which is 10 times that of human tissues. Too much nucleic acid raises uric acid levels and can lead to hyperuricemia and gout, so the United Nations Protein Advisory Group recommends limiting nucleic acid intake to 2 g per day in the adult diet.
Antioxidant strength
The antioxidant capacity of yeast extract is ten times that of blueberries. The polysaccharides in the yeast cell wall, mannan and beta-glucan, are major contributors to this.
Flavour and taste
Yeast extract is the fourth most important natural food-flavouring agent, after monosodium glutamate, nucleotides and hydrolyzed protein. Nucleotides based on AMP, IMP and GMP are 100 times more taste-active than seasonings such as monosodium glutamate.
What the authors conclude
- They say most yeast extract production is still used in relatively low-value applications, such as animal feed and microbial culture, and that application in nutritional supplements, medicine and cosmetics is still limited.
- They advise that the technology for removing or reducing nucleic acids in yeast extract still needs further development and should be addressed by future research.
- They say future research should aim to maximize the potential of yeast extract to meet consumer demand for healthy, nutritious and safe food.
How it was done
The authors say most reviews of yeast extract only look at its practical uses, and there is a gap between how it is used and what is known about it. They also say there are very few reports comparing the pros and cons of the many ways it can be produced.
They pulled together existing research on what yeast extract contains, how it is produced, and how it is used in food, animal feed, biotechnology, cosmetics and medicine. They also compared different production methods and looked at what might come next.
What it can’t tell you
- This is a review of existing research, not a new experiment, so it cannot show cause and effect for any health effect.
- Many of the findings come from animal or lab studies, which cannot show what happens in people.
- The paper does not compare yeast extract directly against other flavourings or supplements in a single controlled trial.
Who paid
- Conflicts
- Conflict of Interest . The authors have no financial conflicts of interest to declare.
- Authors work at
- Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), P.R. China
The paper
- Title
- Yeast Extract: Characteristics, Production, Applications and Future Perspectives
- Type
- ReviewThe authors read earlier studies and describe what they found. It isn’t a new study.
- Evidence
- Studies in people · animals · lab
- Summarised from
- Full text
- Cite
- Tao Z, Yuan H, Liu M, et al (2023). Yeast Extract: Characteristics, Production, Applications and Future Perspectives. Journal of microbiology and biotechnology. doi:10.4014/jmb.2207.07057Free full textPubMed 36474327DOI
Summary written 26 Sep 2026. Check it against the paper before it changes what you eat. How we summarise papers · Report an error