“Inside Information” for You
“Pssst. Hey you. Yeah you. I’m over here in the fedora and trench coat. I’ve
got some really important inside information for you, see. It’s been
undercover for a long time but I thought you had the right to know… There is a
stealth, secret headquarters that has been set up inside your body, a
command center that has taken control of your health. Seriously. Just listen
closely and I’ll tell you about this covert operation, it goes by the code name
‘microbiome’.”
It sounds mysterious, this “microbiome”, and it is. The word means loosely, tiny
community of life. But this vast microbial community in our bodies has a
bigger genetic gene pool than our very own cells. Don’t worry, they are not
coming to invade you, they actually want to help. This genetic pool is a
powerful brain child and is important in deciding some of our most essential
points of health. This itty-bitty city is located primarily in our gut, composed of
more than a hundred trillion citizen microbes including; bacteria, viruses and
fungi all together these tiny guys weigh in at over five pounds. What they do is
help us digest our food, support our immune system and protect us from
disease-causing bad bacteria and potentially a whole host of health problems.
This is a huge job and requires refinement, the key is keeping this beneficial
biome in balance. One of the most important elements for achieving this is gut
diversity. Apparently, a plethora of microbes is best. It’s as if having lots of
diverse microbial know how, is what we need to address whatever we send
our microbiome’s way.
I wish I could say that we knew a lot about this gut check but we don’t really.
It’s a burgeoning area of science that we will be hearing much about so stay
tuned. Essentially, from the nutrition point of view, it is important to eat a
healthy and very diverse diet, this makes our microbiome diverse. What is
especially important is that we eat “real foods” focusing on fresh not
preprocessed. There are several terms that are key to this important dynamic,
prebiotic, probiotic and synbiotic. Prebiotics are things like fiber containing
foods, an apple for example, on which our important microbes can thrive. A
probiotic is a food that actually contains microbes, like yogurt. Synbiotic is the
working together of these two creating a synbiotic relationship. So, for
instance, at breakfast I had fresh apples (prebiotic because it has fiber and
pectin) and yogurt (probiotic because it contains good microbes). The microbe
team and food for the team work together make up a synbiotic win for the gut.
Fermented foods have microbes. Another delicious example is the fresh
halibut dish our chef’s at Salty’s are making for the halibut festival (Halibut Recipe). The chimichurri sauce (which ferments and becomes a
probiotic) also has asparagus (a nice fiber containing prebiotic) makes up a
very nice diverse synbiotic relationship. I suggest you clean your plate! I love
the way Salty’s makes real food out of real food, it’s so delicious and so good
for you. In fact, Chef Jeremy has some delectable “inside information for you
too, check it out right here!
More About Microbiome Here
Even More About Microbiome Here