WE ARE what we eat. If this applies to gut bacteria too, it could explain higher rates of allergies and other inflammatory diseases in rich nations.
So says of the University of Florence, Italy, who compared the gut bacteria of children in Burkina Faso and Italy. The stools of the African children contained almost three times as many short-chain fatty acids. SCFAs are generated by bugs associated with diets containing a very high proportion of vegetables and cereals (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ). SCFAs kill harmful gut bacteria such as salmonella and help…
