Could Eating Tomatoes Improve Your Gut Health?
Ripe Tomatoes

The researchers found that youthful pigs that ate a eating plan high in tomatoes for two weeks experienced an improve in the range of their gut microbes and a change in their intestine germs to a much more favorable profile.

In accordance to researchers, the favorable effects acquired from research on pigs warrant even more investigation in human topics.

According to scientists, a eating plan weighty in tomatoes for two weeks led to an increase in the diversity of intestine microbes and a modify in gut micro organism in direction of a much more favorable profile in youthful pigs.

Dependent on these results from a small-expression intervention, the research crew options to conduct equivalent scientific studies in individuals to examine the prospective overall health-relevant connections among consuming tomatoes and variations to the human intestine microbiome.

“It’s achievable that tomatoes impart advantages through their modulation of the gut microbiome,” said senior author Jessica Cooperstone, assistant professor of horticulture and crop science and food science and technological know-how at The Ohio Condition University.

“Overall dietary styles have been related with variations in microbiome composition, but food items-particular results haven’t been examined pretty much,” Cooperstone said. “Ultimately we’d like to identify in individuals what the job is of these specific microorganisms and how they could possibly be contributing to probable wellbeing results.”

The research was lately revealed in the journal Microbiology Spectrum.

The tomatoes applied in the examine ended up developed by Ohio State plant breeder, tomato geneticist, and co-writer David Francis, and are the form generally found in canned tomato products and solutions.

Ten a short while ago weaned regulate pigs ended up fed a regular diet program and 10 pigs had been fed the typical diet program great-tuned so that 10{7b6cc35713332e03d34197859d8d439e4802eb556451407ffda280a51e3c41ac} of the meals consisted of a freeze-dried powder produced from the tomatoes.

Fiber, sugar, protein, excess fat, and calories had been similar for the two diet plans. The regulate and research pig populations lived independently, and scientists working the research minimized their time expended with the pigs – a sequence of safeguards intended to make certain that any microbiome modifications witnessed with the study food plan could be attributed to chemical compounds in the tomatoes.

Microbial communities in the pigs’ guts have been detected in fecal samples taken right before the examine started and then 7 and 14 times immediately after the eating plan was introduced.

The staff applied a technique identified as shotgun metagenomics to sequence all microbial

“This was our first investigation as to how tomato consumption might affect the microbiome, and we’ve characterized which microbes are present, and how their relative abundance has changed with this tomato intervention,” she said.

“To really understand the mechanisms, we need to do more of this kind of work in the long term in humans. We also want to understand the complex interplay – how does consuming these foods change the composition of what microbes are present, and functionally, what does that do?

“A better understanding could lead to more evidence-based dietary recommendations for long-term health.”

Reference: “Short-Term Tomato Consumption Alters the Pig Gut Microbiome toward a More Favorable Profile” by Mallory L. Goggans, Emma A. Bilbrey, Cristian D. Quiroz-Moreno, David M. Francis, Sheila K. Jacobi, Jasna Kovac and Jessica L. Cooperstone, 8 November 2022, Microbiology Spectrum.
DOI: 10.1128/spectrum.02506-22

The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, and the Foods for Health initiative at Ohio State.