Diversity Reigns! Eat a Wide Variety of Plants to Optimize Your Gut and Your Health

One of the hottest research topics in the world of wellness right now is the gut microbiome.  It turns out we’re not as autonomous as we once thought, and are actually being controlled in large part by the trillions of microorganisms we play host to, most of which are beneficial—crucial, actually—to our health.  But, thankfully, we have control too, and that comes through what we choose to put into our bodies.  We can completely overhaul our gut microbiomes in a matter of days by the foods and drinks we consume, for better or for worse.  The microorganisms inside us, like humans, have different food preferences, and so the foods we consume will be eaten up by some microorganisms and not others.  In this way, we can nourish our good microbes and starve the bad guys.

Why does all of this matter?  The gut microbiome is home to 70% of our immune system.  That’s incredible!  As emphasized by Dr. Will Bulsiewicz in his new book, Fiber Fueled, the gut is where everything we ingest is sorted, the good from the bad, the wheat from the chaff, and so it makes sense that this is where our immune system would set up shop to act as a gatekeeper.  And because our gut microbiota and immune system are so closely connected (literally by a single layer of cells), the health of one is directly connected to the health of the other.

“A strong microbiome empowers the 70 percent of neighboring immune cells for optimal function to protect us from infection and malignancy.  When we take care of our microbes, they take care of us.” –Dr. Will Bulsiewicz, Fiber Fueled.

So, what should we be putting in our bodies to optimize our gut microbiomes and, in turn, our immune systems?  According to Dr. Rob Knight, creator of the American Gut Project (the largest study of microbiomes in the world to date), the answer is simple:

“The single greatest predictor of a healthy gut microbiome is the diversity of plants in one’s diet.”

“More specifically, he found the consumption of thirty different plants in a given week was the greatest predictor of gut microbial diversity.”  Fiber Fueled.  This doesn’t necessarily mean going vegan.  “Vegan” can encompass super unhealthy diets made up primarily of processed foods.  What this does mean is revamping your diet to be primarily whole-food, plant-based, and including as many different plants in your diet as possible to feed as many of the diverse beneficial microbes as possible (which will also starve the bad guys by not feeding them the sugar and bad fats they crave).  And the more good microbes we have on our team, the more we’re able to take advantage of their healing powers. 

But how do these little microbial workers heal us?  As Dr. B explains extensively in his book, these healthy bacteria use the prebiotic fiber found in plants to create postbiotics like short-chain-fatty-acids, which help heal our guts and bodies.  So this doesn’t mean stocking up on Metamucil.  Our good microbes are experts at processing different types of plant fiber (and resistant starches like potatoes), so the more variety of plant fiber we introduce, the greater number of these different microbes get nourished and multiply, and the more healing postbiotics they produce for us. Fiber for the win!

We have the power to cultivate our microbiota to our benefit—to train our microbial hitchhikers to work on our behalf!  All we have to do is feed them the good stuff—plants, plants, and more (diverse) plants!  And to clarify, “plants” is a term reaching far beyond leafy greens, so in the dietary realm it includes all fruits and veggies, herbs, aromatics (garlic, shallots), nuts, and seeds—any food derived from a plant. 

Here are three easy ways to add more plant variety to your diet:

1. Add more stews/soups/thick veggie sauces to the mix.  These kinds of dishes are conducive to packing tons of plants into one place.  I recently made a recipe called Moroccan Nights Tagine (my attempt pictured here, taken from one of my fave cookbooks, Eat Clean Play Dirty, by the founders of Sakara), which is a thick roasted vegetable “sauce” over quinoa.  Including the garlic and fresh cilantro, this recipe boasts 13 different plants! That’s almost half of your weekly thirty in one dish!
2. Purchase a fruit/vegetable/herb/nut per week you haven’t tried before, or use rarely.  This will not only contribute more variety to your diet, but it will likely result in more creativity in the kitchen trying new recipes!
3. Try substituting a nut-based cream for any creamy sauce in a recipe.  Not only will this add one or more additional plants to your recipe, but it will likely excise some unhealthy fat from your dish.  Last night we tried a recipe from Fiber Fueled—Lentil Masala—which is an Indian lentil dish that includes fabulous anti-inflammatory spices and aromatics (I’m talking about you garlic, ginger, cinnamon and garam masala!) and a cashew cream sauce that made the sauce feel luxuriously rich.  And the cashew cream couldn’t have been easier to make—simply blend 1/2 cup cashews with 2/3 cup warm water! Definite hit!

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So keep eating that awesome broccoli, but try mixing it up with some broccoli sprouts (the immature seedling of broccoli containing 10 to 100 times the amount of cancer and disease-fighting sulforaphane as mature broccoli)!  The more steps we take toward incorporating plant diversity into our diets—one meal, one new plant, at a time—the closer we get to fully leveraging the superpowers of our gut microbiome.