Edible Plant Microbiome

[Wishful]

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-03334-4

I recently had a persistent benefit from eating some squash soup, and wondered whether it could be due to the introduction of some beneficial microbial strain. I did find the article about it, which does list the strains found in several foods. It also points out that not much is known about how likely it is for any of those strains to successfully colonize the gut, or where they would colonize.

For now, I'll just assume that squash carried a strain that did successfully colonize my gut. I thought the article might be of interest to other people. I think it does imply that eating a wide variety of unprocessed foods can be beneficial. Even some processing can be tolerated, since that soup did reach boiling temperature.

It does tempt me to sample more random plant and leaves, although winter is not the best time for that.

 

[skinnybane]

Why do you assume it was bacteria colonizing and not fiber/polyphenols found in squash?

 

[perchance dreamer]

What kind of squash was it?

 

[Wishful]

Why do you assume it was bacteria colonizing and not fiber/polyphenols found in squash?

The likelihood of it being due to changing gut environment changing the microbiome, and the likelihood of it being from a new strain or fragments of a strain, are both reasonable. The fact that it was a persistent change from the first meal makes me think it's at least slightly more likely to be the addition of a new and persistent strain. Bringing soup to a boil and simmering for 20+ minutes should have killed most microbes, but the fact that the squash was in chunks might have let some microbes or spores survive.

I agree that a different type of fibre, or some chemicals in the squash might have altered my existing microbiome populations in a persistent manner. Breaking up or forming a biofilm, helping a good strain or hindering a bad one, hard to know what's going on in that tube. Microbial fragments might be able to trigger some immune response, training them to either attack or ignore an existing strain.

I started this thread because I never really thought about how our food has its own microbiome, exposing us to new strains whenever we eat. Probiotic capsules typically only have a few common strains. Does a guava or a taro root contain a strain that might be unique to that food? Just something to ponder.

What kind of squash was it?

Common butternut. I also have an acorn squash, but haven't finished off my butternut yet. I'm not expecting any additional benefit from the acorn, but I wasn't expecting any from the butternut, so maybe I'll get lucky.

 

[skinnybane]

You are almost certainly wrong about colonization thing. This is one of those things that you just learned about, so you try to apply everywhere but there is no way in fuck you boil something for 20 minutes and it colonizes. Even if you didn't boil it, it wouldn't colonize in 99.99999% cases. The microbes usually do work transiently without colonizing through cross feeding etc.

 

[Wishful]

You are almost certainly wrong about colonization thing.

Well, I'm not particularly hygienic in my food preparation, so it's at least possible that I ingested enough of the squash's microbes from pre-cooking rather than post-cooking. I can't recall whether I tried a piece raw, but that's certainly possible. I'll try that next time, and with the acorn one too.