They say animals look like their owners. Or maybe the owners are like their animals. Interestingly, this applies more to livestock than pets. At least that’s the conclusion of a study that shows that people from rural areas have better ability to digest vegetablesthanks to bacteria inherited from our own animals.
On the other hand we find people who live in cities and industrialized areas. According to this new work published by scientists from Ben Gurion University, from Israel, in these places the ability to digest vegetables is gradually lost. Now we may not notice it too much. But over time, this can lead to intolerance.
Therefore, these scientists recommend also investigating some forms strengthen the microbiota so as not to lose this ability. After all, if we couldn’t digest vegetables, we’d end up eating a diet full of processed foods and meats, which are of course less healthy. It is in our best interest to become more like farm animals.
What do we need to digest vegetables?
Plant cells are surrounded cellulose wall. It is a polysaccharide consisting of many glucose molecules, and it is not easy to break it down into them. The mammalian digestive system does not have all the enzymes needed to break these bonds. However, some bacteria belonging to the intestinal microbiota have this ability.
microbiotaAs we already know, this is a group of all microorganisms that live inside a living being under normal conditions. In the case of digestive microbiota, incorrectly called gut flora, its functions range from keeping external pathogens at bay to helping us digest certain foods.
It is well known that herbivorous mammals have large populations of cellulose-degrading bacteria in their microbiota. It was expected that humans would have them, since we are able to digest vegetables. However, it was not revealed until 2003. Since then, additional research has been conducted to determine whether there are more types of bacteria, in addition to this. This is what prompted the authors of the latest work to conduct a much more comprehensive study based on the analysis of feces from different animal species, periods and regions. Their results were very unexpected, but at the same time instructive.
Farmers who look like their animals
These scientists started with the genome of bacteria identified in 2003 to find other bacteria with similar functions. stool samples. So they found several species, but three in particular. One focused mainly on ungulate mammalslike goats or deer, another one more common in People and one more feature of the rest primates.
They all belonged to the same genre: Ruminococcus. But when we focused on people, there was something especially striking. And stool samples hunter-gatherers, villagers or ancient people, 10,000 to 2,000 years ago, had very high concentrations of bacteria. On the other hand, today’s urban people had much less.
This indicates that, in some way, the bacteria that allow vegetables to be digested have been lost. However, the authors of the study believe that there could be exchange of bacteria. That is, domesticated herbivores were able to transfer some of their gut bacteria to the people who raised them and then ate them.
Will we need supplements?
For now, people in industrialized regions still have enough gut bacteria to digest vegetables. However, if their populations remain in slope, the day may come when we need supplements. Luckily, you don’t have to search for them from scratch because there are already additives that help break down cellulose with very good results. Perhaps in the future they should become part of our diet. After all, we already know that the diet of the future should contain a lot of vegetables. We better not lose our ability to digest them.
Source: Hiper Textual
