#56 - What's your gut feeling?
I am fascinated by nutrition and understanding how what we put into our bodies affects our health. SO at the end of last year, I signed up for a programme (JoinZoe) to see how my body processes food AND what bacteria live in my gut!!!. For a month, you have to be fairly dedicated - wearing a bloody sugar device to monitor spikes in blood sugar levels, providing pooh samples for analysis and eating special muffins at specified times so that your individual reaction can be evaluated. The outcome is a report with a complete breakdown of the good and bad bacteria in your gut AND and scores to indicate blood sugar and blood fat levels. Below is my good bacteria score which I was pretty pleased about!
My score for levels of good bacteria in my gut
Why are gut microbes important?
We have trillions of gut microbes living in our gut. They act like tiny chemical factories to extract nutrients from food, produce vitamins, regulate our immune function and appetite and influence our metabolism. GOOD bugs are associated with better blood fat control (lower levels of triglycerides and “bad” cholesterol), and less visceral (abdominal) fat mass. BAD bugs are associated with less favorable metabolism, higher blood pressure, and poorer glycemic responses.
Our gut gets colonized by many microbes at birth, and the composition of the gut microbiome is mostly dictated by what we eat but also by other factors, such as where we live, who we mix with, our medication, hygiene conditions and our level of exercise and stress. By eating the right foods and living the right lifestyle we can partly shape the composition of our gut microbiome, and positively affect our health and weight.
You will never guess what keeps good bacteria happy - yes you guessed it, unprocessed plant-based foods. (Sadly, there really isn’t any health advice that says crisps, cake and chips are good for us).
Try to eat a wide variety of plant-based foods
Ideally, we should be eating a minimum of 30 different varieties of plant-based foods every week. That sounds a lot BUT remember that includes fruit and vegetables, beans and lentils, wholegrains like brown rice, quinoa and oats, nuts and seeds, nut butters and herbs and spices. Here is an example of some of my meals from the last week and these add up to 30 (without even counting every meal)
Baked tray of as many types veg as possible with olive oil and lots of thyme (cauliflower, broccoli, sweet potato, beetroot, celeriac, courgette, cavolo nero and red onion) with cod loin = 8
Porridge oats with blueberries, raspberries and 3 types of seed sprinkled on top (I keep a tub of pumpkin, chia and sunflower seeds) = 6
Snacks throughout the week - apple, banana, plum, handful of almonds, handful of peanuts = 5
Salad with 3 types of mixed beans, cucumber, lettuce, radishes = 6
Omelette with mushrooms, asparagus and tuna= 2
Butternut squash soup = 1
Strawberries with yoghurt and walnuts = 2
It’s not just important WHAT we eat but even how we combine different foods and the time of day makes a big difference. We need to control our blood sugar levels and to avoid big spikes that lead to inflammation, energy dips, increased hunger and even heart disease. I won’t bore you with all the details but for me, unexpected foods caused a blood sugar spike (such as unsweetened muesli and my beloved corn cakes with marmite). But making some minor tweaks made a big difference.
So the moral of the story is that we are all unique so take the time to find out what your gut bacteria likes to eat - and if you can’t be bothered with that just eat a wide variety of unprocessed foods.
