Let’s Talk About Gut Health.
What even is gut health?
Inside your large intestine there is an enormous community of microbes. We have about 30 trillion human cells in our bodies and almost 40 trillion microbes in our gut alone – we have way more microbes in our body than human cells!
The fibre in the food we eat feeds our beneficial microbes and we want a diverse range of these good ones that produce important compounds that can repair the gut barrier, reduce inflammation in the body and even greatly improve our moods!
To support beneficial microbes we need to eat a diverse range of whole foods! The best science shows that people who eat more than 30 unique whole plant foods a week have the best gut health, have a healthy gut barrier – and experience the most benefits from having this team of beneficial microbes to support them (like improved mood and energy).
So to support your gut health focus on eating a diverse range of whole plant foods, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes and whole grains.
Reference: McDonald D, Hyde E, Debelius JW, et al. American Gut: an Open Platform for Citizen Science Microbiome Research. mSystems. 2018;3(3):e00031-18. Published 2018 May 15. doi:10.1128/mSystems.00031-18