Three weeks ago, The Fermentation Association shared results of a Stanford study that found fermented foods improve health. Numerous media outlets picked up on the study results, too, and now The New York Times has shared them as well, reporting: “Now scientists are discovering that fermented foods may have intriguing effects on our gut. Eating these foods may alter the makeup of the trillions of bacteria, viruses and fungi that inhabit our intestinal tracts, collectively known as the gut microbiome. They may also lead to lower levels of body-wide inflammation, which scientists increasingly link to a range of diseases tied to aging.”
The Times article pointed out that the study results challenge the long-held belief that fiber-rich foods are good for the gut. A high-fiber diet instead showed little impact on the makeup of the gut microbiome. In fact, study participants who “had the least microbial diversity had slight increases in inflammation when they ate more fiber…” suggesting they lacked the microbes to digest the amount of fiber consumed.
Meanwhile, the participants that consumed a diet high in fermented foods had a greater number of microbial species develop in their gut. And only 5% of those new microbes were directly from the fermented foods they ate. “The vast majority came from somewhere else, and we don’t know where,” says Justin Sonnenburg, an author of the new study and a professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford.
Read more (The New York Times)