MAF: loses effectiveness if frozen, or not?

[Sasha]

Several people have mentioned freezing their MAF and I thought I'd read somewhere that it kills off some of the bacteria (i.e. a bad thing). Some people have mentioned that even though they froze their MAF, they still had some benefit.

I wish I could remember where I read about freezing MAF! But I just googled on whether you could freeze probiotic yoghurts (assuming that MAF is a probiotic yoghurt par excellence) and found this:

Always choose a chilled yogurt as opposed to a frozen one. Beneficial bacteria can survive freezing but frozen yogurt contains far fewer probiotic bacteria than a chilled yogurt.

on this site: http://www.probiotics-help.com/probiotic-yogurt.html which doesn't say who they are or why they would know what they're talking about.

However, there's loads of opinion about this on the net including this thread on a bodybuilding site which has people arguing both sides:

http://www.wannabebig.com/forums/showthread.php?63542-Freezing-Yogurt-and-L.-Acidophilus

So basically I haven't got a clue.

I'm erring on the side of caution and not freezing my MAF.

Anybody got any evidence on this?

 

[Sasha]

Just googling a bit more...

ehow says you can freeze yoghurt without harming the bacteria:

http://www.ehow.com/how_5623395_freeze-home-harming-healthy-bacteria.html

and on the livestrong site here:

http://www.livestrong.com/article/259020-list-of-probiotic-healthy-foods/

it says, "According to the University of Michigan's Integrative Medicine division, freezing does not destroy probiotics."

So these more respectable sites seem to be saying, yes, you can freeze it - but then, maybe there are other equally respectable sites I haven't got to yet...