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Combination of protein and carbohydrates good for gut health, says study

Posted on: 29/Nov/2016 4:39:53 PM
New research has shown that dietary combination of protein and carbohydrate may help promote good gut health as such a diet encourages cooperation between us and bacteria in our gut. The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Sydney in Australia, and was published in Cell Metabolism.
 
Speaking about this, the researchers said, There are many different diet strategies that claim to promote gut health, and until now it has been very difficult to establish clear causality between various types of diet and their effect on the host`s microbiome. This is because there are many complex factors at play, including food composition, eating pattern and genetic background. 

This research really lays the groundwork for future modelling by setting out the rules for a general model of how diet shapes the gut ecosystem. The simple explanation is that when we eat in a way that encourages cooperation between ourselves and bacteria we achieve a good microbiome, but when we eat in a way that doesn`t require cooperation this lets bacteria do whatever they want - and mischief can ensue. The largest nutrient requirements for our gut bacteria are carbon and nitrogen in the foods we eat. 

As carbohydrates contain no nitrogen but protein does, the bacterial community response to the host animal`s diet is strongly affected by this diets` protein-carbohydrate ratio. The fact that this same pattern was seen across almost all groups of gut bacteria indicates that the makeup of the microbial ecosystem is fundamentally shaped by a need to access nitrogen in the intestinal environment. Our new model suggests that while high-carbohydrate diets were the most likely to support positive interactions in the microbiome, such benefits were relative to the protein intake of the host animal.