A Gut Feeling

Some time ago I sent off a poo sample to the British Gut Project, to profile my gut flora.

 

I just got the result and it makes gripping reading.  In our age of gluten sensitivity, wheat allergy, coeliac disease, irritable bowel syndrome and ulcerative colitis it’s good to see that it is now possible to find out, at a microbial level, what’s going on. 

 I realise this is the second time I’ve mentioned the ‘poo’ in a column, but the only other way to find out what’s going on in your intestines is to submit to deeply invasive surgery.  Not worth it for someone who is casually interested to see what those little microbes are up to down in the depths.

 The results were gratifying:  I have a higher level of firmicutes than average – these are the lactobacilli that are so important to the digestion of carbohydrates and that produce the lactate that fuels the brain.  I also have a stonking level of bacteroidetes – these are the bifidobacteria that love to convert fibre into butyric acid, the backbone of our immune system.  Not so good on the proteobacteria, which you find in decomposing meat, because meat very infrequently gets a chance to decompose in my digestive system. 

Those are the headlines.  Then the chart compares your results to the average, people who eat a similar diet and are of the same sex, age and BMI.  Then comes the final comparison: they compare your gut flora profile to that of Michael Pollan, the esteemed New York Times food writer and author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto and Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual.

Outcome?  My gut flora profile exactly matches that of Michael Pollan.  Result! 

 Pollan is the author of several memorable quotes that describe his view of diet and health.  The best known one is his all-encompassing dietary advice: “Eat food.  Not too much. Mostly plants.”   That’s how I eat.  2 meals a day, mostly whole grains and vegetables. 

His other advice includes: “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognise as food” and ‘Shake the hand that feeds you” (in support of local food). 

 The natural food industry has always been on this page – while the ‘experts’ have been busy batting on about one nutrient after another without noticing that the nutritional factor that makes a huge difference is the invisible mass of 10,000 different microbes (mostly lactobacilli and bifidobacteria), weighing more than a human brain, that have to deal with the processed stuff we throw at them.  

I’ll always remember a 1972 BBC Panorama programme in which they sat the experts on a panel and kept us natural food nuts in a small audience.  The leading expert was Dr. Arnold Bender, Professor of Nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College.  At the time 100% wholemeal bread was the iconic healthy food.  We were put down sharply when the worthy professor announced that white bread was far superior to wholemeal bread because it had more protein and carbohydrate per slice thanks to the absence of all that bulky non-nutritious bran. This reductionist approach to food was set out in his 1985 book ‘Health or Hoax’ where he assured his readers that ‘there is no such thing as health food’ and that the health food industry is a fraudulent, non science-based, industry that takes advantage of consumer gullibility and fear.  The continuing rule of white bread, hydrogenated fat and processed food was underpinned by experts like Bender and the Institute of Food Science and Technology, which he co-founded.

So it was refreshing when Michael Pollan used his position of influence and wide readership at the New York Times to set out the opposite case.   The argument for natural foods is proudly unscientific: if your gut flora are in good shape they will drive you instinctively towards the whole, natural foods that you need.  Far better to trust their judgement than some professors who tell you to stop eating butter and eat margarine (in those days typically 30% hydrogenated fat), then change their mind about butter after a few million have died of hydrogenated fat-induced heart attacks.  Nature knows best – keep it simple.

Find out how you compare to Michael Pollan at   http://britishgut.org/

British Gut Project results.jpg
 

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