What Your Food Says About You

Hello!

This week I will be discussing the human microbiome, specifically gut microbiota. I have always heard the phrase “you are what you eat”, but I have never truly understood what it meant. I always assumed that you will feel better overall if you eat food that is good for you like vegetables. I can testify to that. As soon as I begin eating unhealthy for a week, I can feel it. On the flip side, I also feel more energetic when I eat food that is good for my body. This understanding is what I will be discussing deeper today. 

According to an article published in Nature, what you eat greatly affects what microbiota is in your stomach and the functions they make. This has an effect on your overall health and how disease may occur. There are benefits to eating healthy besides weight loss. Flavonoids are microbes that are thought to provide health benefits, like improving blood pressure, when regularly consumed. Consuming these microbes encourages a community of healthy microbial growth. A study was conducted where healthy men were divided into two groups. One group consistently ate flavanol rich meals and the other did not. The two groups were assessed after a given time to identify their gut microbial community. The flavanol rich group consisted of  Eggerthella lenta bacterial groups with an abundance of Adlercreutzia equolifaciens. The group that did not consume an abundance of flavonoids had an inverse effect, consisting of little growth. This reveals that consuming healthy food increases your microbial variance. This is an important realization to make. Frequent consumption of fast food or unhealthy food may really damage the diversity of your gut microbiota. If you understand the long term effects of your actions, it may encourage you to change the choices you make daily. 

An article published in Science revealed a study that your stomach microbiome is better at detecting disease than your own genes. Researchers examined 47 studies observing the correlation between 13 complex diseases (meaning that both environmental and genetic factors cause them) and the gut microbiota. This correlation was compared to the 24-genome-wide association studies, which correlate genetic variants with diseases. This comparison revealed that gut microbiota was 20% better at distinguishing a healthy and ill person than the person’s genes. This shows the importance of your microbiota and the unique ability it has to give an insight into your body. For the most part, it is a mutualistic relationship so it is important to have it flourish on nutritious food.