Will the Diet of Your Culture Improve Your Microbiome?

Does the diet of your ancestors impact your microbiome? A review examined whether the common foods found in specific cultures can benefit people of that culture who are following a diet high in refined carbohydrate and low in fiber, as is common in the U.S. Let’s take a look.

The Gold Standard: the Mediterranean Diet

The Mediterranean diet has been studied more than any other; it emphasizes vegetables, whole grains, fish and seafood, nuts and seeds, olive oil, fruit, and limited sweets. The benefits for reducing heart disease, hypertension, and T2D are well documented, and we’ve always assumed that the Mediterranean diet is appropriate for everyone. But is it? The point to this review is that while there are similarities, there are cultural differences that may be important.

For example, there are more tubers (root vegetables) in African diets and virtually none in most Asian cultures. The Latin diet has more dairy products while some Asian diets contain almost none. If you want to become more familiar with cultural diets, check out www.oldwayspt.org. It’s a non-profit organization that has developed cultural appropriate diets and teaches people to prepare foods using traditional cultural spices.

It makes sense; one size does not fit all. One interview in the paper was with an Eastern Indian physician who had always recommended the Mediterranean diet to her clients of Indian descent, but the whole grains of the Mediterranean diet were not the same as traditional Indian grains. Once she changed the types of grains and other high-fiber foods to more culturally appropriate choices, her patients did better in following a higher fiber diet.

The Benefits of a Culturally Appropriate Diet

Simply stated, people are more inclined to follow a healthier, high-fiber diet if it’s based on their own culture. The differences in grains and vegetables may be subtle but seem to be important. The tastes and flavors may be more familiar to first or second generation immigrants.

There is also speculation that the microbiomes of people from varying cultures may have an evolutionary aspect. In other words, whether you’re a recent immigrant or a fourth generation of immigrants as I am, your microbiomes may respond better to foods that your ancestors have eaten for generations. Remember the short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) in the Thursday Memo this week? They may be dependent, not just on fiber, but fiber from the foods of your ancestors.

The Bottom Line

This paper gives us something to think about. What if we ate a more plant-based diet that’s more culturally based? I think it’s worth a try. It doesn’t mean that you won’t benefit from eating a high-fiber food that’s not culturally based; there’s no question that you will. But if you ate culturally based foods and they were prepared based on cultural tastes, you might decide to eat more of them and you might get more benefit.

The first thing I did was to look at traditional foods from my ancestors in Poland and other eastern European cultures. I’m not done yet, but it seems cabbages and root vegetables are definitely part of my future diet; I’ll keep you posted as I research my diet further. In the meantime, check out Oldways to get some perspective on what culturally appropriate foods may benefit your diet. If you’re an African-American man married to a Chinese-Canadian woman, you’re going to have some very interesting meals.

What are you prepared to do today?