Processed Foods Cause Obesity? Destroys Bacteria That Keeps You Thin

• comments
• 
• 

Processed meat found in fast food and a diet of monotonous junk food has been shown to destroy helpful gut bacteria that keep obesity and other chronic conditions at bay, a new research shows.

The research was conducted by Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at London's King College. According to UK Daily Mail, Spector says that obesity has become epidemic because we eat more processed foods that reduce the range of helpful bacteria in our gastrointestinal tract.

Spector conducted the research with the help of his son, Tom, a 23-year old genetics student. Tom accepted to have fast food meals for 10 days which included McDonald's hamburgers, chicken nuggets, chips and soda.

"Before I started my father's fast food diet there were about 3,500 bacterial species in my gut, dominated by a type called firmicutes," Tom said via UK Telegraph.

He added, "Once on the diet I rapidly lost 1,300 species and my gut was dominated by a group called bacteriodetes. The implication is that the McDonalds diet killed 1,300 of my gut species."

Spector's findings showed that good stomach bacteria are associated with keeping the harmful pathogens in check in the stomach and that obesity is much more complex than overeating.

"Microbes get a bad press, but only a few of the millions of species are harmful, and many are crucial to our health," Spector added.

"What is emerging is that changes in our gut microbe community, or microbiome, are likely to be responsible for much of our obesity epidemic, and consequences like diabetes, cancer and heart disease," he explained.

The imbalance of good and bad bacteria in the gut has been associated with the higher risk of inflammatory bowel disease and colitis, the UK Telegraph notes.  According to NHS, 1 in every 4 adult Britons is obese, as are 1 in every 5 children in the UK.

A varied range of diet that includes garlic, celery, raw cheese, dark chocolate and Belgian beer could help propagate the growth rate of these bacteria. These microorganisms, he claims, are effective for weight loss and similar to cutting back on sugar and fat.

"Fifteen thousand years ago our ancestors regularly ingested around 150 ingredients in a week," the professor said.

"Most people nowadays consume fewer than 20 separate food types and many, if not most, are artificially refined," he revealed. "Most processed food products come, depressingly, from just four ingredients: corn, soy, wheat or meat".

Spector is a founding member of British Gut Project, a study that tries to discover more about how the bacteria in our body are linked to our health. According to Daily Times, Spector's upcoming book, "The Diet Myth: The Real Science Behind What We Eat," will explain how a wide assortment of diet can help gut bacteria in forestalling chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, cholesterol and heart conditions.