Eating for Trillions: How Our Diet Diversity Effects Our Gut Health

Has anyone ever told you that “you are what you eat”? They were probably just trying to say that your diet will influence how you feel physically and emotionally, but recent findings may give that phrase a new meaning.

The gut microbiota is the ecosystem of bacteria that lives in our intestines. We share a symbiotic relationship with these bacteria because they feed off the food that we eat and in return they help us with digestion, produce vitamins, and fight off harmful bacteria. Our microbiota is just as much a part of us as our organs. But since they eat the food we eat, what we feed ourselves will impact their health just as much as it does ours.

For our microbiota to function properly for us, we want it to be a diverse ecosystem made of many different species of bacteria. Our guts are home to hundreds of species of bacteria that all work in different ways to support our body. People with a more diverse microbiota are generally healthier than people with less diversity. People with a microbiota that isn’t very diverse or is imbalanced in some way have what is called “dysbiosis.” Dysbiosis can lead to health problems like bowel inflammation, obesity, depression, and many more. To prevent dysbiosis we need to maintain the diversity of our gut microbiota and to do that we need to give it the nutrients it needs.

Bacteria thrive when they are supplied with the sources of nutrition that they are best adapted to using. By eating a wide variety of foods, you will increase the diversity of your gut microbiota by making so more of them have their preferred source of nutrition. It is recommended that you eat thirty different plants a week to maintain a healthy and diverse microbiota. This may sound like a big ask but these plants can be in the form of vegetables, fruits, grains, beans seeds, herbs, and spices so you have a lot of options available to you. You should also avoid foods that have been found to be bad for your gut microbiota like processed foods, food high in refined sugar, and foods with saturated fats.

If you find that you have a hard time eating a diverse diet, you could also try supplementing your diet with probiotics and prebiotics. Probiotics are supplements that contain live bacteria that we want to have living in our guts. Taking probiotics can directly increase the diversity of your microbiota by introducing new bacteria but you would still need to eat a diverse diet to keep them around. Prebiotics are supliments that are high in fiber that our body can't digest but is what our gut bacteria love to eat. While it would be better to get the nutrients your microbiota needs form diverse foods because most prebiotics only use one source of fiber, prebiotics can still be a good way to ensure that the your gut bacteria have what they need to thrive. Pre and probiotics shouldn't be seen as a complete replacement for a diverse diet but as more of an enhancer that helps you get the most out of it.

Maintaining a diverse diet will help your microbiota stay in tip top shape which will in turn help the rest of your body to feel and work better. When you are deciding what to have for your next meal, you should consider that what you choose to eat isn't just nourishing you, it's also nourishing the trillions of bacteria that work to keep you healthy.