A 2021 study by the University of California - Riverside suggests that eating too much fat and sugar as a child can alter your microbiome for life, even if you later learn to eat healthier. The study is one of the first to show a
significant decrease in the total number and diversity of gut bacteria
in mature mice fed an unhealthy diet as juveniles.
The research team
also found that gut bacteria are sensitive to exercise. A
group of mice fed the standard American diet of high carbs, saturated fats and high levels of protein and sugars but who had access to a running wheel had
higher levels of the good bacteria Muribaculum. But the mice eating a healthy diet saw a similarly high proliferation of Muribaculum. An
earlier study found similar results with exercise alone, suggesting
that gut diversity can be improved with exercise alone. Conversely, they
found that an early-life standard American diet impacted the microbiome later on in life more
than early-life exercise. Researchers concluded that “You are not only what
you eat, but what you ate as a child!"
"We studied mice, but the effect we observed is equivalent to kids
having a Western diet, high in fat and sugar and their gut microbiome
still being affected up to six years after puberty," explained UCR
evolutionary physiologist Theodore Garland. He now wants to delve deeper
into the exact timing of dietary influence, precisely when it impacts
the microbiome, and for how long.
If you won't eat better for yourself, then maybe do it for your children.
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