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Gut microbiome researcher here - not involved in this study but happy to answer questions or dig in with anyone interested!
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Eat fiber. Meet the recommended amount and eat a diverse set of fiber which will feed different microbes in the gut. It will take some time for the gut to adjust to the new levels though. Expect gas, cramping, etc for a few days.
Do you advise just fiber from natural foods, or do you take a fiber supplement (like those that come in powder form)? I guess the supplement route won't give me the diverse fiber types you mention, am I right?
There was a lot of work on microbiome and cancer immunotherapy... the latest study in the field published in the most prestigious journal there is [1] seemed to show that fibre intake was more important than any specific microbe. In fact they found that eating more fibre and taking probiotics resulted in worse outcomes than just eating more fibre alone. This was recapitulated in a mouse model: > Together, these data…
Are insoluble and soluble fiber equivalent in this respect? My gut (pardon the pun) says insoluble is more important, but I'm not sure if that's true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_fiber
It sounds like both soluble and insoluble fiber are important for different reasons.
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Why only more vegetables? Isn’t fiber also in some other food?
I get my fiber from oatmeal. Simple plain rolled oats, no sugary additives, roast with a bit of olive oil in a pan to unlock their full nutritional potential, then cover with enough water, add salt and let simmer. Consume with appropriate additions as desired, I usually go for plain yogurt.
I never heard of this technique before. I tried to Google about it, but I cannot find any scientific studies about it. (I found plenty of pseudo science websites touting it.) Can you point to any scientific studies about this technique?
Just another data point, but my journey through digestive issues and recovery was kicked off by the worst depression and burnout I ever experienced, which started in 2019 and lasted 3 years. My best guess for what happened is that work stress, excessive celebration and coping with the cognitive dissonance of the pre-COVID era and subsequent pandemic, combined with overtraining and the misuse of protein shakes in plac…
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As just one example, if you live in an area where it is difficult to get dietary Vitamin A, you might enjoy the benefits of not going blind due to Vitamin A deficiency by eating Golden Rice[0]. Have you ever eaten a SweeTango apple? It is one of dozens of varieties that have been created in the last hundred years using genetic engineering via cross breeding[1]. Do you know why commercial tomatoes are so bland? Geneti…
The vitamin A argument boils down to cost. Genetic engineering goes way beyond the possibility space of selective breeding, which we have thousands of years of experience with. When it comes to diet, science is difficult enough as it is. Introducing such novelties only makes it harder.
It boils down to cost in the same way that you and I not owning a private jet boils down to cost—which is to say, as nice as it would be, there are probably not enough resources on the planet to feed everyone a balanced diet without these continued advances in food production, as the current conventional farming practices are not long-term sustainable, and they are already required to actually feed everybody on the planet today.
> Genetic engineering goes way beyond the possibility space of selective breeding, which we have thousands of years of experience with.
And inside that possibility space are things like extremely high-yield crops that end hunger forever. Grains like Golden Rice that solve nutritional deficiencies caused by incomplete diets. Nuts that are modified so they don’t trigger life-threatening anaphylaxis. Crops that absorb and sequester CO2 more efficiently. Delicious new hybrids that don’t even exist right now. Foods genetically modified to be low in FODMAPs so people who have gut problems aren’t so restricted in what they can eat.
All the problems that exist now with diets have hypothetical solutions in genetically engineering crops to create more of the nutrients that we need to be healthy, and to eliminate the bad stuff that makes us sick, down to the point of being able to provide ideal nutrition for a specific person’s body. However, we’re unlikely to get there if people’s imaginations are always focused on the potential negatives instead of balancing those risks with the obvious potential and need for this sort of technology to be developed.
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Also why would GMO be bad? The criticism comes mostly from people that also believe in osteopathic / homeopathic medicine in my social circle. I find it a terrific chance for humanity to engineer plants in such a way that they are more robust against disease and bad weather (with CRISPR/CAS and such methods).
Currently there doesn't appear to be any evidence that GMO is bad for your health and most GMO is just transplanting genes from other edible organisms. Hopefully regulators aren't going to allow insertion of engineered genes producing novel molecules without going through actual medical grade trials for those molecules. Or it may torpedo the entire industry.
And if we're wrong, how do you remove GMO organisms afterwards?
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There's an asymmetry in the risks associated with choosing either a) to restrict or b) not to restrict the set of foods you eat. Overconfidence in (b) carries more risk than overconfidence in (a). The set of chemicals that are toxic is much larger (as in >>>) than the set of chemicals that are necessary for sustaining life.
The set of nutrients that will cause some kind of problem if missing is actually pretty large; consensus dietary advice usually includes the keyword “varied.”