The microbes in your gut are important for your well-being in more than one way. From maintaining body weight to regulating hormones and even mood, the bacteria in your gut play a multi-faceted role in ensuring the health of the body. This is why scientists have been conducting a lot of research on these tiny creatures in your gut, to understand them and their functions better. A new study has said indicated that the relationship between our diet and its components, and the bacteria in our gut, is more complex that we may have thought earlier. The study said that by merely looking at nutrition labels, one cannot predict the effect of a particular food on the gut microbes.
The study titled, "Daily Sampling Reveals Personalized Diet-Microbiome Associations in Humans" was published in the journal Cell Host & Microbes and it closely followed the diet and analysed the stool samples of 34 participants for a period of two weeks. This was done with the purpose of looking at the effects of various foods on the gut flora of the participants. It study also showed that food wasn't the only thing that brought about changes in the gut microbiome. The study indicated that the composition of your gut flora might have more to do with a particular food's category or sub-category like dairy, meats, vegetables etc., that their carb or fat content.
The study reinforced the idea that when it comes to nutrition, one size doesn't fit all and that the same food can have very different impacts on the microbiomes of two different people. The study report said, "Microbiome composition depended on multiple days of dietary history and was more strongly associated with food choices than with conventional nutrient profiles, and daily microbial responses to diet were highly personalized." It also said that following a monotonous diet or constantly eating the same kind of foods does not lead to a stability in gut microbiome and that a diversified diet was a better way of inducing stability in the quality of gut bacteria.
The study concluded by saying, "Our work provides key methodological insights for future diet-microbiome studies and suggests that food-based interventions seeking to modulate the gut microbiota may need to be tailored to the individual microbiome."
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