Geschatte leestijd: 4 minutenBacteria in your stool can provide insight into the expected effectiveness of a particular diet. Your poop as a personal nutrition consultant.
Determining your best diet based on your poop
Researchers from the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark came to this remarkable insight. They investigated whether stool could be used to estimate the extent to which a known diet would be successful. This Nordic Diet is based on Danish recommendations such as lots of fruits, vegetables, fibers, and whole grains.
The gut bacteria could play a significant role in determining personal nutrition and the development of obesity, as demonstrated in previous studies.
Human intestinal bacteria have been linked to the increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity, and scientists have started to investigate whether the intestinal bacteria can play a role in the treatment of overweight. But it is only now that we have a breakthrough demonstrating that certain bacterial species play a decisive role in weight regulation and weight loss.
Professor Arne Astrup, Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Ratio between two groups of bacteria is important
The ratio between two groups of bacteria seems particularly important in determining whether one will lose weight through the Nordic Diet. In the study, 31 participants followed this diet for 26 weeks, during which they lost an average of 3.5 kilograms. A control group of 23 participants followed the “Average Danish Diet” and lost an average of 1.7 kilograms. So, on average, a difference of 1.8 kilograms. However, this difference compared to the ‘average diet’ could be doubled or completely absent depending on the type of gut flora.
When participants were divided based on their gut bacteria, it was discovered that those with relatively more “Prevotella bacteria” compared to “Bacteroides bacteria” lost more weight. They lost 3.5 kilograms more on the Nordic Diet over 26 weeks than on the Average Danish Diet.
Conversely, it was found that people with a high level of Bacteroides bacteria compared to Prevotella did not benefit from the Nordic Diet over the Average Danish Diet. They did not lose any extra weight. In the study, this meant that about half of the people did not benefit from the Nordic Diet.
The researchers have confirmed their findings in two separate studies.
Personalized nutrition advice
You can imagine saving a lot of time, effort, and energy by starting directly with a diet that suits you instead of following a diet that only gives you a 50% chance of success.
The results of the study indicate that certain indicators of personal health should play a greater role in determining personalized nutrition advice. Things like stool, blood, and other samples that indicate health should be used more often to provide personalized advice.
This is a major step forward in personalized nutritional guidance. Guidance based on this knowledge of intestinal bacteria will most likely be more effective than the “one size fits all” approach that often characterizes dietary recommendations and dietary guidance.
– Mads Fiil Hjorth, University of Copenhagen
For now, it is mainly universities and other academic institutions that conduct these studies. However, the University of Copenhagen has licensed an American company to develop a concept based on these findings, which could make personalized advice much more personal. The entire process from collecting information (sending stool samples) to analysis and resulting nutritional advice.
Best diet = Future fitness
It is one of the many benefits through which science may bring about significant changes in the future of fitness and nutrition. Previously, for example, we wrote about the DNA diet which, based on your genes, should provide more insight into the diet that should work best for you personally. In addition, we see more and more developments in discovering which different factors exactly contribute to overweight and how to influence them.
For now, however, a truly practical solution is still in the future. The effectiveness of different types of diets with different types of gut flora needs to be mapped out. ‘Nordic Diet’ doesn’t mean much to most people. It would be much more useful to break this down into the macros and other important properties of the food itself. For example, “for high Prevotella, low carbohydrates for weight loss.”
It should also be clarified to what extent this can be linked to different population groups. Europeans generally have many more Bacteroides bacteria than Africans who have more Prevotella [2]. From this, you could possibly draw conclusions about a population group if the individual differences within a group turn out to be smaller than the differences between various population groups. Why send stool samples if statistically, the chance is very small that you have a certain gut flora?
On the other hand, it also appears that long-term dietary habits influence this ratio between different gut bacteria [3]. So, you are not only a ‘victim’ of your gut flora, but you also partly cause it yourself. The typical Western diet, high in animal fats and protein, leads to more Bacteroides bacteria while more carbohydrates, especially fibers, lead to more Prevotella.
So, does diet determine gut flora and gut flora then determine the effectiveness of a diet?
There are enough reasons to wait a little longer and not send your stool to your online coach in our app just yet. It will be appreciated.
Reference
- M F Hjorth, H M Roager, T M Larsen, S K Poulsen, T R Licht, M I Bahl, Y Zohar, A Astrup. Pre-treatment microbial Prevotella-to-Bacteroides ratio, determines body fat loss success during a 6-month randomized controlled diet intervention. International Journal of Obesity, 2017; DOI: 10.1038/ijo.2017.220
- De Filippo, C.; Cavalieri, D.; Di Paola, M.; Ramazzotti, M.; Poullet, J. B.; Massart, S.; Collini, S.; Pieraccini, G.; Lionetti, P. (2010). “Impact of diet in shaping gut microbiota revealed by a comparative study in children from Europe and rural Africa”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107 (33): 14691–6. PMC 2930426 . PMID 20679230. doi:10.1073/pnas.1005963107.
