Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
"Tipping Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes"
Other than fiber, what else do plants make that animals don't that could help account for how dramatically
slimmer those who eat plant-based diets tend to be? Phytonutrients! Mammals, including humans,
harbor two main types of friendly gut bacteria: Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes. In terms of obesity though,
one appears friendlier than the other. There's mounting evidence that the gut flora is different in healthy
patients than it is in obese patients, which primarily involves higher numbers of Firmicutes than
Bacteroidetes phyla in the case of obesity and overweight. So just to keep them straight, you can remember:
fatter Firmicutes and bonier Bacteroidetes.
Obese individuals appear to have more Firmicutes than Bacteroidetes in their guts. If you put people on a
diet for a year, you can actually change the proportion. Giving people certain antibiotics may actually
trigger obesity because you're mucking around down there. How can we improve our ratio? Well, there is a
class of phytonutrients called polyphenols that do two things: they preferentially feed Bacteroidetes, while
at the same time suppressing the growth of Firmicutes.
So the researchers were like, hey, maybe that's why the use of vinegar has been recommended for thousands of
years for weight loss! What's it's often made out of? Red wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar - both of which
have grapes and apples packed with polyphenols. The weight-lowering property of fruits,
green tea, wine vinegar in obese people may be partly related to the polyphenol content of them,
which consequently changes the gut flora, which may consequently alter the balance between the two
groups of Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes bacteria in the favor of Bacteroidetes.
It's funny. Naysayers of the power of phytonutrients often point to studies like this showing that up to 85% of
those wonderful blue anthocyanins in blueberries end up in your colon unabsorbed.
But that may be exactly where some of the magic happens.