Say goodbye to nutritional information and hello to food structure

For years now, we have been choosing foods based on their nutritional content of fat, protein and carbohydrate, but today we know that the structure of foods may have a greater effect on our health than the percentage of the nutrient content in a particular food. The right food structure – or ‘packaging’ – means you are feeding your gut bacteria, which, in turn, provides you with healthy biology, vital nutrients, an important interplay with your intestinal hormones and a mature immune system.

Two foods with the same nutritional content won’t necessarily give you the same health benefits. Does that sound strange? Actually, it’s not when you know the health-related significance of your gut bacteria and when you understand why having a good relationship with your gut bacteria is almost as important as having a good relationship with your doctor.

If you get your nutrition in unrefined form – from unprocessed foods – then the gut bacteria acknowledge that nutrition with a number of health-promoting mechanisms you won’t get if the food comes from refined foods:

• When you get your nutrition in unrefined form, your gut bacteria make sure you get a whole range of vital vitamins and fatty acids.
• When you get your nutrition in unrefined form, your gut bacteria form hormones that not only make you tolerate sugar better, but also help remove excess sugar from your blood.
• When you get your nutrition in unrefined form, your gut bacteria makes sure to ‘share’ the calories with you.
• When you get your nutrition in unrefined form, your gut bacteria reward you by releasing flavours that stimulate the taste buds in the gut, giving you a better sense of being sated.

The fact that the structure and packaging of food is essential to our health is not at all something new. And yet we have spent years focusing on the percentage of nutrients in our food. We need to change that now! Fortunately, both the new dietary recommendations from patient organisations and new research is helping to push our understanding and adjust what’s ‘normal’.

For example, Danish Professor Oluf Borbye Pedersen is behind a study that shows that by cutting down on gluten-containing foods, such as bread, pizza and pasta (made from wheat, rye and barley), you can achieve greater intestinal health – with a number of health-promoting benefits. We draw similar conclusions in a scientific review article, where we establish, using a new perspective, that microbiota (gut bacteria) are a fast route to increased health. If you care about microbiota, they, as your best allies in health, will nourish you with healthy biology, vital nutrients and a mature immune system.

As you probably already know, I recommend feeding your microbiota coarse vegetables (for example cabbage) every day to ensure its bacterial diversity.

Read the book The Truth about Sugar, understand the sugar’s journey in your body and be in charge of your own health universe.