Best and Worst Foods for Gut Health
Gut Health
Your gut relies on just the right balance of different bacteria to digest your food and to prevent infection and inflammation. Gut health also affects your mental health, weight, blood sugar, and liver. Prebiotic foods (whole grains, bananas, greens, onions, garlic, soybeans, and artichokes) act as food for healthy gut bacteria. Probiotic foods like yogurt are full of good bacteria already.
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Best: Fermented Foods
Fermenting is a method of preserving foods with bacteria and yeast. When you eat fermented foods such as yogurt, kefir, kimchi, and sauerkraut, you get the live bacteria in them. This makes them a great source of probiotics.
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Best: Bananas
Bananas supply your gut with inulin, a type of fiber that helps good bacteria grow.
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Best: Leafy Green Veggies
They’re a top-notch pick because they’re high in fiber and a special carb, both of which feed helpful gut bacteria.
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Best: Whole Grains
Your body can’t break down fiber on its own. When it gets to your large intestine, gut bacteria get to work fermenting it. This creates acids that feed cells in your intestines while helping to protect your gut from harmful bacteria.
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Best: Polyphenols
These compounds in foods protect your cells from damage while fighting inflammation and infection. Colorful foods are rich in polyphenols, as are tea, coffee, and red wine. Polyphenols in green tea may help fight “bad” bacteria like E. coli and calm symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and peptic ulcers. Polyphenols can also promote the growth of good gut bacteria.
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Worst: Red Meat
Red meat can trigger the growth of gut bacteria that lead to clogged arteries. Stick to lean protein sources such as fish or plant protein like beans and tofu. If you can’t give up beef, pork, and lamb completely, choose leaner cuts with names that include round, loin, or sirloin.
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Worst: Fried Foods
Fried foods are already on the not-good-for-you list. It hasn’t been proven in humans yet, but studies on rats shows that heated oil, which soaks into the fried foods, can damage healthy gut bacteria.
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Worst: Foods With Antibiotics
Antibiotics can’t tell the difference between “good” and “bad” bacteria, so they kill them all. Often, farmers treat animals with antibiotics to keep them from getting infections. If you eat these animal products, you can kill the healthy bacteria in your gut. And because some bacteria become antibiotic resistant over time, meaning the drugs no longer affect it, you might end up with a hard-to-kill superbug.
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Worst: Alcohol
Alcohol, especially if you’re a heavy drinker, can disrupt the balance of bacteria in your gut and help bad bacteria grow. Moderation is key.
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Worst: Caffeine
Coffee, soda, and even too much chocolate can up the caffeine in your body, which ramps up your intestines. This excitement in your digestive system often causes diarrhea.
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Sources Medically Reviewed on 04/15/2020 Reviewed by Kathleen M. Zelman, MPH, RD, LD on April 15, 2020
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SOURCES:
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine: “Gut Bacteria.”
Harvard Health Publishing: “The gut-brain connection,” ”Do gut bacteria inhibit weight loss?”
Frontiers in Endocrinology: “Impact of Gut Microbiota on Host Glycemic Control.”
Medical Sciences: How Do Gut Bacteria Influence the Liver?”
Mayo Clinic: “What are probiotics and prebiotics?”
University of Massachusetts Medical School Center for Applied Nutrition: “Fermented Foods for Gut Health.”
Johns Hopkins Medicine: “5 Foods to Improve Your Digestion.”
Consumer Reports: “6 Foods That Are Good for Gut Health.”
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health: “Quinoa.”
UNC Nutrition Research Institute: “Polyphenols: Colorful, Healthy, Plant Compounds You May Already Eat & Drink.”
International Food Information Council: “Gut Check: Whole Grains and the Microbiome.”
Research in Microbiology: “Effect of Tea Phenolics and Their Aromatic Fecal Bacterial Metabolites on Intestinal Microbiota.”
Letters in Applied Microbiology: “Effect of Phenolic Compounds on the Growth Of Selected Probiotic and Pathogenic Bacteria.”
Current Opinions in Gastroenterology: “Polyphenols and gastrointestinal diseases.”
Molecules: “Antibiotic Use in Agriculture and Its Consequential Resistance in Environmental Sources: Potential Public Health Implications.”
American Heart Association: “Meat, Poultry, and Fish: Picking Healthy Proteins.”
CDC: “Antibiotic/Antimicrobial Resistance (AR/AMR).”
The Lancet Planetary Health: “Restricting the use of antibiotics in food-producing animals and its associations with antibiotic resistance in food-producing animals and human beings: a systematic review and meta-analysis.”
Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: “What Is the Low FODMAP Diet?”
The Lancet Planetary Health: “Restricting the use of antibiotics in food-producing animals and its associations with antibiotic resistance in food-producing animals and human beings: a systematic review and meta-analysis.”
American Journal of Physiology Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology: “Colonic microbiome is altered in alcoholism.”
Alcohol Research: Current Reviews: “Alcohol and Gut-Derived Inflammation.”
Clinical Liver Disease: “The Gut Microbiome in NAFLD and ALD.”
Reviewed by Kathleen M. Zelman, MPH, RD, LD on April 15, 2020
This tool does not provide medical advice. See additional information.
THIS TOOL DOES NOT PROVIDE MEDICAL ADVICE. It is intended for general informational purposes only and does not address individual circumstances. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment and should not be relied on to make decisions about your health. Never ignore professional medical advice in seeking treatment because of something you have read on the WebMD Site. If you think you may have a medical emergency, immediately call your doctor or dial 911.
