Modern Diet: How Has it Impacted Our Health?

Modern Diet

Have you ever wondered how our diet has affected us? Researched dug into the microbiome  of some tribes and discovered some ground-breaking facts! Healthline recently published an article on this topic. I have summed up the main points in this blog post.

By studying the microbiome of existing hunter-gatherer tribes, researchers draw a link between poor quality diets and a host of health issues.

Your microbiome is made up of the thousands of microorganisms that take up residence in the digestive system. These microscopic organisms are present from the moment you’re born and are then shaped by dietary and other factors for the remainder of your life.

The researchers collected 350 stool samples from members of the Hadza over one year. They found that their gut microbiome is different from and more diverse than that of people living in the industrialized world. They also found that specific types of bacteria present for the Hadza in the dry season is almost entirely extinct in the vast majority of people living in the industrialized world.

“[People] consuming Western-type diets may be losing key microbial species that are important for maintenance of health. Now with consumption of high-fat, high-refined sugar diets, and low-fiber Western diets, those critical microbial groups are lost… this results in mismatches and absence of key microbes that are essential for health,” he said.

The Stanford research is one of a number of studies in recent years that suggest diet and gut health play an important role in overall well-being.

A 2016 study, also led by Sonnenburg, showed that depriving mice of dietary fiber greatly reduced the diversity of gut-microbial species. This was then restored when dietary fiber was reintroduced. However, if the fiber deprivation was maintained for four generations, the gut-microbial species that once bounced back were lost permanently.

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