The key to a healthy gut microbiome is a healthy diet
A varied diet rich in vegetables is known to be healthy for one’s well-being. Excessive consumption of meat, especially red meat, can lead to chronic and cardiovascular diseases. That is also because what we eat shapes the gut microbiome. At the same time, excluding certain foods, such as dairy or animal products, is not necessarily a general solution to achieve microbial balance. But can we find out which food products determine differences in the gut microbiome? Starting from this question, a group of researchers analyzed biological samples from 21,561 individuals (vegans, vegetarians and omnivores) living in the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy, and found that the dietary pattern has a strong influence on the gut microbiome and on specific gut microbes that are associated with better health. The data have been published in Nature Microbiology.
The gut microbiome, the set of microorganisms that inhabit our intestine, plays a crucial role in determining a person’s health, as it influences many aspects, from digestion to the immune response. So far only few large-scale studies have examined how different diets impact the composition of gut bacteria. This study, which also received European funds, focused in particular on the differences and consequences of different diets on the microbiome. The results show that diet patterns shape the gut microbiome, as they not only determine the microbes necessary for digestion, but also the acquisition of microbes directly from the food itself.
“As more and more people adopt vegan and vegetarian diets, we wanted to find out how different their microbiomes are and which microorganisms are responsible for these differences,” explains Gloria Fackelmann, first author of the study and researcher at the Cibio Department. The group that conducted this research, which also includes scholars from King’s College London, was coordinated by Nicola Segata, professor of Genetics and head of the Computational metagenomics laboratory of the Cibio Department. [Continue reading…]