Fecal Manhunt Reveals the Effect of Foods on Our Health
Feces may not seem appealing, but they can reveal a lot about our health. In fact, researchers are beginning to better understand the effects of individual foods by analyzing the bacterial community in fecal samples. While studies that rely on volunteers keeping food diaries are often inaccurate, stool analysis provides a painless and simpler alternative. Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign led by Hannah Holscher and Leila Shinn examined fecal samples from volunteers who consumed a specific amount of certain foods every day. The team was able to determine with 80 to 87 percent accuracy whether the people had consumed almonds, broccoli, or walnuts.
The team searched for metabolites, the chemicals that bacteria produce when they break down food, since it is challenging to find out microbiomes themselves. They examined the effects of six specific foods: almonds, avocados, broccoli, walnuts, barley, and oats. Based on the patterns they found from the metabolites in stool, they were able to deduce whether other people had eaten the same foods.
Our gut is home to trillions of microbes connected to what we eat. For instance, vegetarians have different populations of bacteria than people who eat a lot of meat. Researchers worldwide are investigating how these relationships between nutrition, microbiome, and health work. Changes in the microbiome have been associated with numerous diseases like irritable bowel syndrome, Parkinson’s disease, and arthritis.
Eran Elinav from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and colleagues showed that sweeteners can affect our microbiome’s composition and unfavorably alter our body’s response to sugar. Sarah Berry, who studies the effects of diet on metabolism at King’s College London, says that the microbiome is a critical piece of the puzzle. Berry and her colleagues are working on discovering how nutrition can affect the microbiome and, consequently, people’s health.
Stool analysis offers a glimpse into the potential future of personalized nutrition recommendations that target specific microbes and metabolites that could affect our appetite, metabolism, and health. While it is still early days, stool analysis could be a valuable tool to directly improve a person’s health.
