Everyone Is At-Risk Of Gut Bacteria And Inflammation

Ice cream, peanut butter, and other processed foods might taste good, but they're not good for you. Not only because they're sweet and can probably eventually lead to diabetes when you do not have control over the portions you consume, but because they are found to promote gut inflammation.

With almost everyone consuming some sort of processed foods these days, everyone is at risk of gut inflammation! 

Huffington Post reported that specific food additives can affect a person's gut bacteria, which can promote inflammation in the intestines. Eventually, inflammation can lead to a range of chronic diseases.

In the new study cited by the news article, the main researchers claimed that processed foods such as ice cream and peanut butter have emulsifiers. These ingredients are needed to improve the food texture and improve shelf life but may be doing harm than good when consumed. 

The two emulsifiers called carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) and polysorbate-80 (P80) were found to stimulate normal gut bacteria and trigger inflammation.  

Co-researcher Benoit CHassaing presented their findings at Digestive Disease Week on May 21. The researchers claimed that emulsifiers, when implanted on the mice that did not have any gut bacteria even developed gut inflammation. It is not yet tested on humans but the findings are already worth noting. 

The findings served a follow up to an earlier 2013 study by the same researchers, who found that emulsifiers can trigger inflammatory bowel disease in mice that were already at-risk of the condition. 

The researcher therefore warned people of eating processed foods. It's not enough to just read labels to check if there are emulsifiers because more often than not, even if emulsifiers are listed on ingredient labels, they can go by many different names,

In other news however, some reports claimed that gut bacteria is not always bad. Stuff NZ cited a study reported that gut microbiome can even be the key to healthy weight. A person with a healthy balance of good and bad bacteria is likely to be of healthy weight. "Studies on human stool samples have found that thin people have a much greater diversity - or garden - of bacteria species compared to obese people," the research revealed.