Follow a Mediterranean diet for a healthy gut

A Mediterranean-style diet rich in vegetables and fermented milk products such as yoghurt, coffee, tea and chocolate, boosts beneficial bacteria, scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have found. A Mediterranean diet is not only good for your heart but also your gut health.

Researchers have found that eating a plant-based diet enhanced the good bacteria living in the gut by up to 7 percent as compared to only 0.5 percent from eating a more meat-centric, Western diet.

Using an animal model, the research team designed the study to mimic human Western- and Mediterranean-type diets that could be controlled and analyzed over a sustained period of time.

Long-term diet studies involving people usually rely on self-reported dietary intake collected via questionnaires with nutrient intake only estimated, said the study's lead author Hariom Yadav.

In the pre-clinical study, non-human primates were randomized to either Western or Mediterranean diet groups and studied for 30 months. The Western diet consisted of lard, beef tallow, butter, eggs, cholesterol, high-fructose corn syrup and sucrose, while the Mediterranean diet consisted of fish oil, olive oil, fish meal, butter, eggs, black and garbanzo bean flour, wheat flour, vegetable juice, fruit puree and sucrose. The diets had the same number of calories.

At the end of the 30 months, Yadav's team analyzed the gut microbiome - the good and bad bacteria that live in the gastrointestinal tract - in both diet groups through fecal samples. They found the gut bacteria diversity in the Mediterranean diet group was significantly higher than in the group that ate the Western diet.

"We have about 2 billion good and bad bacteria living in our gut," Yadav said. "If the bacteria are of a certain type and not properly balanced, our health can suffer.

"Our study showed that the good bacteria, primarily Lactobacillus, most of which are probiotic, were significantly increased in the Mediterranean diet group." The study is published in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition.

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