Key message: Junk food can destroy the good gut microbes in your body that help you keep thin.
Action point: Restrict your intake of fast foods and include foods in your diet that encourage the growth of good gut bacteria. These include yogurts, root vegetables, nuts, olives and high-fibre foods.
Want another reason to not eat junk food? New research shows fast food kills off the bugs that make you thin.
Leading academic and author of the new book The Diet Myth: The Real Science Behind What We Eat, Professor Tim Spector believes he has uncovered a vital piece of the puzzle that could help explain our rising obesity epidemic.
Spector, who is professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, researches the link between microbes, food and health.
During his research, he experimented with several unusual diets and recorded their effects on gut microbes. In one experiment, he enlisted the help of his son, Tom who agreed to a diet of fast food, including sweetened carbonated beverages, for 10 consecutive days. The researchers then tracked the microbes by collecting stool samples before, during and after Tom’s diet, and sent them to three different labs to check consistency.
Apart from the intensive diet making him feel temporarily ill, the results all told the same story: Tom’s community of gut microbes had been devastated.
The clearest marker of an unhealthy gut is losing species diversity and after just a few days Tom had lost an estimated 1,400 species – nearly 40 per cent of his total. The changes persisted and even two weeks after the diet his microbes had not recovered.
This is bad news, according to Spector, who said this loss of good microbes could affect the body’s metabolism and immune system. He said we rely on our bacteria to produce much of our essential nutrients and vitamins.
Spector’s research also found that sweeteners in diet fizzy drinks had adverse affects on metabolism, leading to weight gain.
On the positive side, Spector claims that a diet which encourages the growth of a range of bacteria could be just as effective for weight loss as cutting back on fat and sugar. This includes yogurts, root vegetables, nuts, olives and high-fibre foods. His research also found that fasting diets such as the 5:2 diet could benefit microbes and metabolism, and that our microbes crave, above all else, food diversity.
Reference
Spector, T (2015) Your Gut Bacteria Don’t Like Junk Food – Even If You Do. In IFLScience blog. Accessed online May 2015 at http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/your-gut-bacteria-don-t-junk-food-even-if-you-do
Kat Boehringer
Freelance journalist and editor
Kat Boehringer specialises in health communications including health writing, health promotions, and social media management. In her spare time she works as a massage therapist and aspiring novelist. Connect with her at LinkedIn.
