What Food Label Nutrition Facts Don't Tell You About Your Gut Microbes What nutrients will help the microbes in your gut thrive? Rocketclips, Inc./Shutterstock.com

It seems like every day a new study is published that links the bacteria in the gut to a specific disease or health condition. The allure of research like ours and that of other groups is that it might eventually be possible to give personalized recommendations for what specific foods to eat to shift your bacteria in a direction that improves your health.

To understand how individual foods change the bacteria that live inside the human gut, collectively known as the microbiome, we need to know the microscopic makeup of each food we eat. But that data isn’t available on food labels or in any current nutritional databases.

This lack of detail has been a limitation in understanding specific food-microbe relationships in humans to date. As a registered dietitian and nutrition scientist, I’ve had a longstanding interest in foods and human health. When I joined a computational research lab studying the microbiome, I was interested to learn if it would be possible to predict how foods changed the microbiome if we simply gathered a enough daily data from a group of people eating their normal diets.

Learning from 500 stool samples

In our recent study, published in “Cell Host & Microbe,” our research group studied the effect of foods on the microbiome. We recruited 34 volunteers and asked them to record everything they ate during a 17-day period and to also provide daily stool samples. By analyzing the microbial DNA in the stool samples, we were able to see what species made up their microbiome.


innerself subscribe graphic


We found that the nutritional content of our subjects’ diets – the macro- and micronutrients like what is usually shown on a food label, such as fats, carbohydrates and sodium – didn’t help us to understand the microbial communities or how they changed from day to day.

But, when we considered the specific foods they ate, we could connect our subjects’ dietary intake to their microbiome composition. We think that this worked because our method let us use the concept of a food to capture some of the complexity of the compounds inside that food that are not usually listed on a food label.

We believe it is noteworthy that the the effects of foods were very personalized – meaning that we saw the same species of microbes respond differently to similar foods in different people.

I am hopeful that in the near future we will be able to confidently tell you what foods will change your microbiome. As a whole, microbiome science is not able to confidently do that just yet, but our recent study contributes towards that long-term goal.

About The Author

Abigail Johnson, Postdoctoral Associate, University of Minnesota

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

break

Related Books:

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking

by Samin Nosrat and Wendy MacNaughton

This book offers a comprehensive guide to cooking, focusing on the four elements of salt, fat, acid, and heat and offering insights and techniques for creating delicious and well-balanced meals.

Click for more info or to order

The Skinnytaste Cookbook: Light on Calories, Big on Flavor

by Gina Homolka

This cookbook offers a collection of healthy and delicious recipes, focusing on fresh ingredients and bold flavors.

Click for more info or to order

Food Fix: How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities, and Our Planet--One Bite at a Time

by Dr. Mark Hyman

This book explores the links between food, health, and the environment, offering insights and strategies for creating a healthier and more sustainable food system.

Click for more info or to order

The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook: Secrets from the East Hampton Specialty Food Store for Simple Entertaining

by Ina Garten

This cookbook offers a collection of classic and elegant recipes from the beloved Barefoot Contessa, focusing on fresh ingredients and simple preparation.

Click for more info or to order

How to Cook Everything: The Basics

by Mark Bittman

This cookbook offers a comprehensive guide to cooking basics, covering everything from knife skills to basic techniques and offering a collection of simple and delicious recipes.

Click for more info or to order