Tim Spector is a professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, and is lead investigator of the British Gut Project. He’s also the author of The Diet Myth: The Real Science Behind What We Eat. Spector says that diet health is clearly more complex than calories in and calories out. Much of it has to do with microbes and the importance of our gut microbiome, which he likens to discovering a new organ in our body.
Spector shares that we’ve lost much of the microbial diversity that we once had, citing people like the Hadza in Tanzania and Amazonian tribes. Unlike people living in the west, “they have these super healthy microbiomes and they don’t get obese, they don’t get many other chronic diseases and don’t get allergies”. Spector states that the west’s love affair with antibiotics, processed food and sterile living environments has resulted in the compromising of our microbiome health.
Another cause of poor microbiome health are the foods we eat -- or just as importantly – don’t eat. Spector sites findings from the British Gut Project. “It has shown that the number one factor to determine having a healthy microbiome is the number of different plants you ate in a week.” The more diverse the food we eat, the more diverse our gut microbes.
If we ate over 30 different plants – including fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds – each week we’d all have a healthier gut, he says. While that sounds simple, Spector says that on average we’re now only eating around five different plants per week.
Upping our consumption of fermented foods, a wider variety of plants, fibre and polyphenol-rich foods like nuts and berries is the best way to feed those 100 trillion microbes that we might not have even known we had.
So you have probably guessed it --this next week we will do our EAT A NEW VEGETABLE OR FRUIT EVERY DAY bonus challenge. I would love it if you would eat 30 different fruits, vegetables and nuts but to earn the weekly bonus challenge you only need to eat at least ONE fruit or vegetable each day that you have not eaten in the previous month.
I think for a lot of us success in losing weight falls into a habit of eating the same thing (at least for breakfast or lunch) every day. But being a healthy person encompasses more factors than mere weight control. Let’s branch out ladies and bless our microbiome with a wider variety of plants! Happy eating!
