Low-fiber diets mess up gut microbes—and changes can become heritable
“Think of the children!” may one day be a slogan for a health campaign imploring people to eat more fiber.
Doctors and nutrition experts have been harping on the importance of fiber for years, particularly how most people in industrialized countries eat less than the recommended daily dose of 25 to 38 grams. After all, the nutrient, a diverse group of molecules that includes complex carbohydrates, helps keep you “regular.” Perhaps less well-known, fiber helps maintain a healthy, diverse population of gut microbes.
But eating fiber may not just benefit the microbial balance of the eater—it may also benefit that of the eater’s progeny, according to a new study in Nature.
In the study, researchers transferred the gut microbes of a healthy human into germ-free mice and then fed the animals either a high- or low-fiber diet. Expectedly, the microbial populations of animals on the low-fiber diet became less diverse after a few weeks. But when the animals within each group bred with each other, the microbial changes in the low-fiber group carried on to the next generation and the one after that. In fact, the changes stuck around through the four generations the researchers monitored. In the high-fiber group, microbial diversity flourished, generation-to-generation.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/low-fiber-diets-mess-up-gut-microbes-and-changes-can-become-heritable/