Nurture and improve your gut microbes by altering your food choices, as this is within your power and doesn’t require doctors or specialists.
Focus on the quality of food rather than just calories, fats, or sugars, as manufacturers often use calorie counts to disguise poor quality and ultra-processed ingredients that drive hunger and cravings.
Choose foods that your gut microbes will be happy eating, which generally means predominantly complex, high-fiber plants, as this benefits both your health and the planet.
Strive to consume at least 30 different types of plants each week, including fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, spices, lentils, and beans, to generate a wide variety of microbes that feed off their diverse chemicals.
Eat brightly colored, slightly bitter, and complex plant foods like coffee, dark chocolate, red wine, extra virgin olive oil, nuts, seeds, and berries, as their polyphenols feed gut microbes which then produce healthy, anti-inflammatory chemicals.
Consume a small amount of fermented foods with live microbes daily, such as yogurt, kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut, kimchi, or miso, to introduce beneficial bacteria and chemicals into your gut.
Begin your day with a diverse breakfast, such as full-fat yogurt with kefir, mixed nuts, seeds, and chopped fruit, to quickly accumulate several plant points and set a positive mental tone for gut health.
Break out of routine eating habits, especially for meals like breakfast or salads, to incorporate a greater variety of plant foods and enhance your gut microbiome diversity.
View the 30-plant-a-week goal as an aspirational target rather than a strict rule; any increase in plant diversity, even from 5 to 10, will improve your microbiome, so focus on progress and maintaining the goal in mind.
Incorporate coffee into your diet, as it’s a good source of polyphenols and fiber, beneficial for your gut, and coffee drinkers tend to be healthier with less heart disease.
Focus on changing your breakfast habits first, as it’s often the easiest meal to control and diversify, which can then set a positive mentality for improving gut health throughout the day and year.
Mix up your fermented food intake by trying different options like kefir (more microbes than yogurt), kombucha (even more, with fungi/yeasts), sauerkraut, kimchi (higher diversity), and miso to maximize microbial diversity.
Add spice mixes to your diet at least a couple of times a week, as increasing studies show this can enhance your gut microbes.
Store fermented foods like kefir or kombucha in your fridge at home, making it easy to grab a small shot daily, perhaps with breakfast or your first meal, or at night.