Baseline Gut Microbes Can Predict Diet Outcomes
“Effective weight loss requires a match between diet and gut microbiota.”
Two persons following the same diet do not necessarily achieve the same weight loss results. “There is no universal diet” is a common adage. While the reasons are personalized and beyond measurable by research, one reason is the composition (or profile or enterotype) of the person’s gut microbiota.
Lars Christensen, PhD and his team from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark published their findings in the Journal of Nutrition a few months back. They randomized 75 overweight adults into one of the three diets for 6 weeks: WG wheat, WG rye, or RW (WG, whole grain; RW, refined wheat). Participants were not told to restrict their calories.
As have been well replicated by many studies, those following the high-fibre WG diets lost more weight than the RW diet. More importantly, adults with a higher baseline abundance of Prevotella species in their gut lost 4 pounds while those with lower abundance did not lose any weight, following the…
