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Season your food with dirt? Well, obviously not. But researchers suspect some Americans are too obsessive in avoiding dirt. Dirt contains microbes beneficial to the human gut. (Photo by Joe Crocetta/Staff Photographer / February 28, 2013) |
Americans live in a food paradise. Food is generally plentiful, cheap and made to be convenient.
And, despite the occasional food-poisoning event, the food supply is consistently safe to eat. Government food-safety regulations limit amounts of pesticides, microbial pathogens and other contaminants on produce and in manufactured products. Inspectors check on food producers, food manufacturers restaurants and others in the food chain.
But researchers are examining whether Americans' food-safety vigilance has a downside. Is our food too clean?
Go with your gut
Good nutrition is more than eating a balanced diet with plenty of vitamins, minerals, protein and healthful fats. Good nutrition is not just what you put in your mouth, according to Tammy Thornton, registered dietitian with Washington County Health Department. It's also about what happens in your body.
Specifically in your gut.
"The gut is this hollow tube which stretches from (our mouth and) the tip of our tongue to our rectum," she said. "When you look at all the things that happen in our gut, it should be looked at as its own organ. There's more going on in our gut than in many organs in our body."
Good gut health depends on several factors, Thornton said. But recently, researchers have issued surprising reports on the importance of bacteria to proper gut functioning.
"Living in our gut are trillions of bacteria and other microorganisms that are essential for our life," she said. "They influence our digestion, they influence how we use food for energy. Good, healthy bacteria help ward off unhealthy bacteria, which causes illness and harm in our body."
Microbes are bacteria, viruses, fungi and other one-celled creatures that colonize virtually every ecosystem on Earth. Certain species of microbes live in water, in air, on snow, in rock, in boiling-hot vents on the bottom of the ocean.
And microbes live in the human gut. Researchers call the human community of microbes the microbiome. It's a symbiotic relationship. We help each other. Humans give microbes a places to live and plenty of food, and microbes help humans by breaking down food into usable molecules.
But microbes also train the human immune system to fight pathogens.
It starts at birth
Some microbes are beneficial to humans, such as those that produce Earth's oxygen or break sugar molecules into fuel for the body.
Other microbes are dangerous to humans, and we have evolved defenses. When humans become infected with a pathogen, our immune system develops a cell that specifically targets that pathogen.
But we aren't born with a fully functioning immune system, according to Lita Proctor, program director of the Human Microbiome Project at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C.
In a 2011 presentation at The National Academies in Washington, D.C., Proctor said humans inherit their genetic makeup — the hardware, so to speak, of the immune system — but must program the immune system by exposing it to microbes in the environment.
An infant is a microbe magnet, Proctor said. And the first exposure to bacteria comes from Mom.
"Infants acquire their initial microbes from their mother during normal vaginal birth," Proctor said. "Also, from mother's mouth and skin. It comes from the skin of anybody who is handling the child."
And, despite the occasional food-poisoning event, the food supply is consistently safe to eat. Government food-safety regulations limit amounts of pesticides, microbial pathogens and other contaminants on produce and in manufactured products. Inspectors check on food producers, food manufacturers restaurants and others in the food chain.
But researchers are examining whether Americans' food-safety vigilance has a downside. Is our food too clean?
Go with your gut
Good nutrition is more than eating a balanced diet with plenty of vitamins, minerals, protein and healthful fats. Good nutrition is not just what you put in your mouth, according to Tammy Thornton, registered dietitian with Washington County Health Department. It's also about what happens in your body.
Specifically in your gut.
"The gut is this hollow tube which stretches from (our mouth and) the tip of our tongue to our rectum," she said. "When you look at all the things that happen in our gut, it should be looked at as its own organ. There's more going on in our gut than in many organs in our body."
Good gut health depends on several factors, Thornton said. But recently, researchers have issued surprising reports on the importance of bacteria to proper gut functioning.
"Living in our gut are trillions of bacteria and other microorganisms that are essential for our life," she said. "They influence our digestion, they influence how we use food for energy. Good, healthy bacteria help ward off unhealthy bacteria, which causes illness and harm in our body."
Microbes are bacteria, viruses, fungi and other one-celled creatures that colonize virtually every ecosystem on Earth. Certain species of microbes live in water, in air, on snow, in rock, in boiling-hot vents on the bottom of the ocean.
And microbes live in the human gut. Researchers call the human community of microbes the microbiome. It's a symbiotic relationship. We help each other. Humans give microbes a places to live and plenty of food, and microbes help humans by breaking down food into usable molecules.
But microbes also train the human immune system to fight pathogens.
It starts at birth
Some microbes are beneficial to humans, such as those that produce Earth's oxygen or break sugar molecules into fuel for the body.
Other microbes are dangerous to humans, and we have evolved defenses. When humans become infected with a pathogen, our immune system develops a cell that specifically targets that pathogen.
But we aren't born with a fully functioning immune system, according to Lita Proctor, program director of the Human Microbiome Project at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C.
In a 2011 presentation at The National Academies in Washington, D.C., Proctor said humans inherit their genetic makeup — the hardware, so to speak, of the immune system — but must program the immune system by exposing it to microbes in the environment.
An infant is a microbe magnet, Proctor said. And the first exposure to bacteria comes from Mom.
"Infants acquire their initial microbes from their mother during normal vaginal birth," Proctor said. "Also, from mother's mouth and skin. It comes from the skin of anybody who is handling the child."
