What is the effect of cooked vs. Raw food at the gut?

It appears intuitive that cooked food and raw meals probably impact the gut microbiome in one-of-a-kind ways. However, there were few to no studies on this subject matter, up to now. A new look at mice and humans now confirms this belief. Because cooking involves exposing meals to heat, it tends to change the diverse meals’ physical and chemical properties. But do these changes alter the sensitive microbial surroundings of the gut? The query that researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and other institutions recently set out to reply.

“Our lab and others have studied how one-of-a-kind styles of food regimen, inclusive of vegetarian as opposed to meat-based diets, impact the microbiome,” says the senior author of the new study, Peter Turnbaugh, Ph.D., a professor at the University of California, San Francisco. “We have been surprised to find out that nobody had studied the essential query of the way cooking itself alters the composition of the microbial ecosystems in our guts,” he provides.

Cooked foods regulate a bacterial variety.

In the new take a look at — the findings of which appear in Nature Microbiology, the researchers started by examining how exceptional forms of cooked and raw meals would possibly affect the intestinal microbiota of mice. To do so, they fed mice a diet of both raw and cooked pork or raw and cooked sweet potato. The crew used these meals, especially because preceding studies had proven that cooking alters their nutritional components, and because each is commonly characteristic in human diets. First, the researchers found, quite, that raw meat and cooked meat did not affect the mice’s intestinal microbiota in obviously distinct ways. However, there have been clear differences in how raw and cooked sweet potatoes affected rodents’ intestinal surroundings.

Mice on an uncooked potato weight loss program had a poorer bacterial range within the intestine and fewer microorganisms than baseline measurements. They additionally had a better share of Bacteroidetes bacteria, which play a key role in the degradation of glycans, a type of sugar. To verify those findings, the researchers did another series of experiments. They fed mice now not simply raw and cooked sweet potatoes but also white potatoes, beets, carrots, corn, and peas — ingredients with numerous starchiness and digestibility levels. As before, the researchers discovered that cooked versus raw potatoes, of each variety, affected microbial range within the intestine in another way. The equal becomes now not genuine of the opposite foods.

This, the authors explain their look at the paper, is in all likelihood because potatoes, not like the other meals in this experiment, have “a high amount of low digestibility starch,” a carbohydrate with structures that are transformed by using publicity to heat. “We had been amazed to see that the variations have not handiest because of changing carbohydrate metabolism, but also can be driven using the chemical compounds determined in flora,” notes Turnbaugh. “To me, this honestly highlights the significance of considering the opposite components of our weight-reduction plan and the way they impact intestinal microorganisms,” he adds.

The team also noticed that mice on the uncooked food diets lost weight, which indicates that the gut microbiome’s adjustments can be responsible. However, while the researchers transplanted intestine bacteria from mice fed uncooked diets to mice consuming normal chow, the latter gained virtually all won weight. This conundrum left the researchers at a loss, and they’re nevertheless searching for out what may have additionally brought about this surprising outcome.

Possible implications for human fitness

At the final level in their research, the investigators teamed up with an expert chef. They recruited five wholesome girls and three healthy men, elderly 24–40, who agreed to participate in the nutritional test. The chef prepared comparably uncooked or cooked plant-based food, which the members attempted in random order for three days each. After three days on the uncooked or cooked food regimen, the participants submitted stool samples to the analysis laboratory. Every player tried every food regimen.

Once extra, the researchers observed clear differences among populations of intestinal bacteria following exposure to raw versus cooked ingredients. However, there had been diffuse differences in the researchers’ changes determined inside the human microbiota, compared with the mouse microbiota. In the future, the researcher intends to conduct behavioral research to allow them to recognize now better understand not just how cooked food impacts gut microorganisms but also why there are variations among how cooked food affects people compared with other mammals.