5 ms·
My long-running pet theory is that eating a large variety of foods is bad for our gut biome. Between breakfast, lunch, and dinner, our intestinal flora cycles t
by pubby 4y ago
My long-running pet theory is that eating a large variety of foods is bad for our gut biome. Between breakfast, lunch, and dinner, our intestinal flora cycles through blooms and die-offs of different bacteria. The blooms interfere with bacteria diversity, while the die-offs create waves of toxins that trigger our immune systems. To give an analogy, it's a bit like an ecology having its climate messed with. Imagine a forest that was hot one day, cold the next, dry as a bone on some days, and wet as a swamp the next.
I reckon most animals eat a steady diet of only one or two things, and people did too for a very long time (on a seasonal scale). It was only recently that we ate so many different foods so frequently, and this coincides with a rise in gut-related illnesses and obesity in first world countries. Many people see success treating these diseases with some diet, but what's interesting is how different and disjoint these diets are. For example, both carnivore diets and vegetarian diets have seen success treating inflammatory bowel disease. Perhaps this success isn't due to eating one food over another, but rather to the reduction in variety a diet brings.
- brylie 4y agoThere are research studies exploring the link between dietary diversity and gut biome, such as the following: A healthy gastrointestinal microbiome is dependent on dietary diversity https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4837298/#:~:text=The%20more%20diverse%20the%20diet,narrow%20the%20GI%20microbiome%20further https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4837298/#:~:tex...
- lionkor 4y agoPeople lived normal happy lives for thousands of years on varied diets, not sure what else you could possibly want.
- anentropic 4y agoI guess maybe they were serially varied, as food is gathered or harvested in season, rather than simultaneously varied though? So you might eat a wide variety of things during the year, but for weeks at a time you might be eating lots of just the few things that are currently available Not saying that is the case, I don't know, but I would not totally dismiss OP idea out of hand
- harpersealtako 4y agoAn easy counterpoint is that Japan is a very healthy society with the lowest obesity rate in the developed world, and they actually have a mantra that says "eat 30 different foods every day". Japanese people directly attribute their health to the diversity and variety of their diet.
- BizarroLand 4y agoI thought that traditionally they ate rice as their main food and everything else was more or less a topping for the rice.
- harpersealtako 4y agoYes, that's one of the big mindfucks in the nutrition world, which is that arguably the healthiest society on the planet has a diet high in sodium, refined carbs, and fried foods.