The notion of eating well for good health is not new. Most of us know that a diet free of processed foods and full of whole foods is best for maintaining a healthy body and lifestyle. So how does healthy food impact our gut?
What does sugary, processed food do to our gut? Even as young children we program our brains to want sweet treats. We celebrate birthdays and positive life events with sweets. Our taste receptors like the sweet taste causing our brain to register this sweet preference. It is these neural connections that are made early on in life that make it harder to moderate sugar consumption later in life.
The gut-brain relationship also explains why many people continue to make the same poor foods choices even though these choices can make us feel tired, lethargic, and unfocused.
Dr. Emeran Mayer explains this well:
“[The other effect] is the adaptive mechanisms where sugar and fat change the receptors and desensitize the Vagus nerve [which] generates a feeling of satiety and fullness. If you’re on a high-fat diet, these receptors get desensitized and you no longer get that feeling, so you keep eating because the feedback mechanism that shuts off is no longer [working]. Our diet with these high-caloric, high-density foods has hijacked the system.”
It is interesting that food choices can switch off the I am full mechanism in the brain leading us to overeat these processed foods.
So, what should we be eating?
To optimize the gut-brain relationship and improve your overall health focus on a large variety of plant-based foods. It is not enough to just eat tomatoes, cucumbers, and the occasional banana.
Have you ever heard the expression eat the rainbow?
This means eating a wide variety of plant-based foods in a bunch of different colors. We know that different color plants offer specific beneficial nutrients. We also know that a diet with a wider variety of food also leads to a more diverse microbiome, which leads to a healthier, happier you!
