The Western Diet-Microbiome-Host Interaction and Its Role in Metabolic Disease
Zinöcker MK, Lindseth IA (2018) Nutrients 10(3) 365. doi: 10.3390/nu10030365.
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Abstract:
The dietary pattern that characterizes the Western diet is strongly associated with obesity and related metabolic diseases, but biological mechanisms supporting these associations remain largely unknown.We argue that the Western diet promotes inflammation that arises from both structural and behavioral changes in the resident microbiome.
The environment created in the gut by ultra-processed foods, a hallmark of the Western diet, is an evolutionarily unique selection ground for microbes that can promote diverse forms of inflammatory disease. Recognizing the importance of the microbiome in the development of diet-related disease has implications for future research, public dietary advice as well as food production practices.
Research into food patterns suggests that whole foods are a common denominator of diets associated with a low level of diet-related disease. Hence, by studying how ultra-processing changes the properties of whole foods and how these foods affect the gut microbiome, more useful dietary guidelines can be made.
Innovations in food production should be focusing on enabling health in the super-organism of man and microbe, and stronger regulation of potentially hazardous components of food products is warranted.
FAB RESEARCH COMMENT:
This review provides a detailed explanation of how modern western diets, rich in ultra-processed foods (UPF), lead to an unhealthy balance of gut microbes, which promotes inflammation - and how this combination of factors leads to the metabolic disturbances that underlie 'modern western diseases'.The authors review a wide range of literature - including laboratory, animal and human studies - and provide clear mechanistic explanations for the many ways in which ultra-processed foods are harmful to health, including:
- the way ultra-processing itself affects how nutrients from foods are absorbed and metabolised
- how common artifical additives in UPF can damage gut, immune and brain integrity and function
- other ways in which UPF-rich diets can promote inflammation
As the authors note, in ignoring these mechanisms, dietary guideline and public health policy still lag far behind the scientific evidence. Hence all countries consuming modern, western-type diets continue to see ever-increasing rates of diet-related disease - including mental ill health.
They also offer some rational proposals for how meaningful and cost-effective steps could be taken to reverse these damaging trends, by updating dietary guidelines to raise public and professional awareness of the risks of UPF, and adopting some simple public health policies that would restrict UPF intakes in favour of whole or minimally processed foods
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