2024-03-19 04:04:06
This year’s Dietitian Week focuses on gastrointestinal health. The importance of a healthy microbiome in the intestines is also gaining importance. ‘Our intestines are more than just a waste machine that excretes food remains. They also need food themselves. Put MAC’s on the menu every day.’
Research into the microbiome has boomed in the last 20 years. But the secret world of good and bad bacteria, viruses, fungi and yeasts in and on our bodies is difficult to unravel.
What we now know with certainty is that the microbiome, which largely occurs in our intestines, plays an important role in Crohn’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome, colon cancer, allergies, asthma and skin problems, but also in our mental well-being. It is not yet clear how exactly this works. For example, do bad intestinal bacteria produce harmful substances, do they break down the mucus layer in the intestine or do they attach to other intestinal cells?
Be that as it may, the number of cases of colon cancer in younger people has increased dramatically in recent years. In the Western world, colon cancer has increased by 70 percent in people under the age of 40 over the past three decades. By 2030, colon cancer will be the most common cancer among young adults in the United States. A large part of this increase is believed to be due to our modern diet and the consumption of sugary soft drinks, but also to a sedentary lifestyle, stress, smoking, alcohol and air pollution. These are all things that also affect the microbiome.
‘The microbiome plays an important role in our immunity,’ says allergy dietitian An De Busser. ‘The bacteria in the intestines protect us like an army against unwanted pathogens. The more diverse the intestinal flora at a young age, the better. We see people every day with intestinal problems and food intolerances for whom we can make a direct connection between intestinal health, allergies and other immune-related conditions.’
Big MAC’s
It is no wonder that for some time now a lot of attention has been paid to controlling immune responses by supporting the microbiome through nutrition. ‘Eating habits have a direct influence on the proper functioning of the intestines and the immune system,’ says De Busser. ‘Our intestines are more than just a waste machine that excretes food remains. They also need food themselves and prefer to see MACs every day (microbiota accessible carbohydrates, nvdr) are on the menu. These are indigestible dietary fibers that are resistant to the digestive and absorption processes in the body and are fermented in the large intestine.’
We also know MACs as ‘prebiotics’ or fertilizer for good intestinal bacteria. ‘The Big MAC diet is a nice name to refer to the basic principles of the nutritional triangle in a different way,’ adds De Busser. ‘It is a diet rich in complex carbohydrates such as vegetables, fruit, legumes and unrefined whole grain products.’
Specifically, prebiotics or MACs are soluble fibers such as fructooligosaccharides, inulin, pectins, resistant starch and glucans. You can find them in beans, lentils, green bananas, oats, barley, garlic, onions, asparagus and potatoes. When you cook pasta, rice and oats and let them cool, you get resistant starch.
Variety is crucial, because one MAC is not the same as the other. For example, the Japanese have a certain type of bacteria in their intestines that can digest carbohydrates from algae, but Europeans and North Americans do not have those bacteria. For the Japanese, algae are a MAC, but not for us.
If your diet is deficient in MACs, your microbes turn to your protective intestinal mucus layer as a carbohydrate source. The last thing you want is to create a intestinal community that specializes in eating intestinal mucus.
Don’t underestimate postbiotics
When MACs are processed in the colon, they create incredibly powerful, but grossly underestimated, “postbiotics.” These are short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) that consist of 2 to 6 carbohydrates, such as acetate, butyrate and propionate. These SCFAs strengthen the intestinal barrier so that unwanted substances and pathogens cannot penetrate the body, something we know colloquially as leaky gut syndrome.
Postbiotics also ensure that the contents of the intestine become more acidic, making it less attractive to pathogenic bacteria. And they also stimulate intestinal motility.
The importance of probiotics
Another way to support the microbiome is to eat the good bacteria themselves, the so-called probiotics that live on our food, for example on an unwashed apple from the garden, or by eating fermented foods.
Examples include kefir, kimchi, yogurt with live bacteria, sauerkraut, tempeh, miso and kombucha. That type of food is said to increase the diversity of the intestinal flora and decrease a large number of inflammatory markers. Please note that the fermented foods you buy in the store are not pasteurized; there is nothing alive in it anymore.
‘Fermentation is nothing new,’ De Busser explains. ‘In ancient times it was already used to preserve food. The health benefit lies not only in the presence of good bacteria, but also in the fact that postbiotics are also formed during fermentation. The fermentation also ensures better digestion. For example, someone with digestive problems tolerates sourdough bread better than regular bread.’
“Don’t expect a miracle from fermented foods,” the dietitian emphasizes. ‘You have to look at the big picture: just using kimchi, sourdough bread or kefir will provide little to no health benefit if you don’t also maintain a generally healthy lifestyle.’
Probiotic supplements: to take or not?
Probiotics are also offered in supplements. Wouldn’t it be better to take a pill every day instead of eating kimchi with long teeth? ‘There is no consensus about the use of probiotic supplements,’ says De Busser. ‘The general advice is that such a supplement is not useful. On the other hand, a number of scientific studies show good results for certain probiotics. If you choose probiotics, it is important to look at the type of bacteria, the amount of them in the supplement and what you want to use them for. These products usually contain only one strain of bacteria, but you do not know in advance which type your body responds best to. It is best to discuss this with your doctor, specialist or dietician.’
Some more tips:
- Provide a healthy and varied basic diet with as much minimally processed food as possible, little salt and red meat and lots of whole grain products, legumes, nuts, vegetables, fruit, poultry, fish and unsaturated fatty acids. Eating a varied plant-based diet is no easy feat. You have to take a different path than what the food industry has laid out for you.
- There is no point in taking all kinds of supplements or drinking probiotic drinks from the supermarket to camouflage an inadequate diet. That’s mopping with the tap open. Only when the basis is good can you refine and change things by adding certain foods to your diet.
- It is better to take a prebiotic supplement than probiotics. Choose beta-glucan, psyllium, guar gum, acai powder, wheat dextrin or isomalto-oligosaccharide, especially if your intestines are damaged. Please note that the commonly used inulin stimulates gas formation and makes you windy.
- For probiotics, it is better to choose fermented foods because you also get other useful substances such as vitamins, peptides and polyphenols.
- Yakult and Actimel? These are yoghurt drinks with ‘added bacteria’. But they are also packed with sugar and sweeteners.
- Avoid saturated fats in meat. Pathogens thrive there that can cause inflammation in the intestines.
- Avoid the additives polysorbate (E433), carboxymethylcellulose (E466) and carrageenan (E407). These would disrupt intestinal permeability and microbiota composition and cause inflammation.
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