The FastDay Forum

Interesting article in Mother Jones on digestive flora. For your perusal:
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/04/gut-microbiome-bacteria-weight-loss
Bring out the miso, kimchi and pickles!

Interesting article. I also nominate you for the post with the most intellectually sounding subject header at this years 5:2fastdiet forum awards.
The same message seems to keep rearing its head, eat plenty of fresh fruit and veg and leave out processed foods and the evil sugar.

What a great read - thank you for a great pre-breakfast read. I have eaten kimchi only once in my life, about 20 years ago. I was in Sana'a in the Yemen and had a really nasty upset stomach and my Burmese friend took me for a bowl of kimchi in a local Korean restaurant. I think it was a case of kill or cure, anyway by the next day I was well on the way to recovery. At the time it was put down to the fiery chillies acting as a sort of antiseptic but maybe it was more to do with healthy bacteria, or possibly I was on the mend anyway and it was just coincidence? Does anyone eat keffir? That sounds like something that could easily be made at home and be tasty and beneficial.

The same message seems to keep rearing its head, eat plenty of fresh fruit and veg and leave out processed foods and the evil sugar.

This falls into a credibility gap - avoid the evil sugar but eat plenty of fresh sugar soaked pulp (sorry, "fruit"). Doesn't add up for me.

interesting. I take probiotics every day and the difference is amazing. PhilT I too eat little fruit but I think the sugar soaked pulp analogy with white sugar interesting. I think the difference is the low GI of most fruit and the high GI of white sugar is it not?

PhilT I too eat little fruit but I think the sugar soaked pulp analogy with white sugar interesting. I think the difference is the low GI of most fruit and the high GI of white sugar is it not?

GI is based on glucose so fruit is generally flattered by GI as it has more fructose and sucrose effectively diluting the glucose...

Glucose GI = 100
Sucrose 65
Fructose 15
Orange juice 48


about half the sugar in oranges is sucrose, the rest glucose & fructose in equal measure.

[carorees]

Does anyone eat keffir?

I love kefir and used to have a big culture of kefir grains which I tended carefully for about 2 years but then it died while I was on holiday in Sweden for a month. I did get some more but failed with that too. I used to have it with my granola for breakfast as I missed the swedish filmjolk which I love, love, love. I meant to get some more but then switched to the pouring yogurt for my breakfast cereal, which is OK but not as nice as filmjolk. You can buy kefir grains from the imaginatively named website: the kefir shop (!). It's fairly easy to keep and make unless you are planning some long holidays! Kefir is rather more sour than yogurt or filmjolk, so perhaps an acquired taste.

I remember a few years back there was a big trend with probiotics. There were some little bottles with a milk-like drink but I never paid any attention since I didn't have any problems back then.

Are they still around? Shall I try them?

I tried them a few years ago, but they gave me acidity... Ah Den......n.
I find sauerkraut really helps, if you like the taste (learned).

Only if it comes with wurst and ale...

Fascinating article which posits an argument that turns dietary theory on its head:

Inflammation might not be a symptom [of metabolic syndrome and obesity], it could be a cause. According to this theory, it is the immune activation caused by lousy food that prompts insulin and leptin resistance. Sugar builds up in your blood. Insulin increases. Your liver and pancreas strain to keep up. All because the loudly blaring danger signal — the inflammation — hampers your cells' ability to respond to hormonal signals...

Where does the perceived threat come from — all that inflammation? Some ingested fats are directly inflammatory. And dumping a huge amount of calories into the bloodstream from any source, be it fat or sugar, may overwhelm and inflame cells. But another source of inflammation is hidden in plain sight, the 100 trillion microbes inhabiting your gut.

Eating 'junk' food, it argues, promotes an unhealthy bacterial monoculture in our gut and this leads to the leakage of endotoxin from the gut into the body where it causes inflammation.

The advice at the end is relatively conventional: eat a wide variety of vegetables (including however high-carbohydrate wonders such as potatoes and fruit), along with perhaps some food that combine probiotic bacteria with prebiotic fibres such as kimchi, kefir and sauerkraut (unpasteurized and fermented for best results, presumably because this gives the highest bacterial load).

Food for thought!

Does anyone eat keffir?

I love kefir and used to have a big culture of kefir grains which I tended carefully for about 2 years but then it died while I was on holiday in Sweden for a month. I did get some more but failed with that too. I used to have it with my granola for breakfast as I missed the swedish filmjolk which I love, love, love. I meant to get some more but then switched to the pouring yogurt for my breakfast cereal, which is OK but not as nice as filmjolk. You can buy kefir grains from the imaginatively named website: the kefir shop (!). It's fairly easy to keep and make unless you are planning some long holidays! Kefir is rather more sour than yogurt or filmjolk, so perhaps an acquired taste.

Have never been able to find traditional fil (Filmjölk) in enlightened California...what a pity since it is superb...everything here is too sweet or wrong consistency...I just have to do without it when I live here. Probiotics still continue to be huge in Scandinavia (Proviva) and are making even more inroads in the US (under the brand Happy Belly, haha). For vegans, soygurt is done very well in Sweden too.

I can vouch that inflammation is a symptom and not a cause.

I can also assure you that in many cases it is irrelevant to what we eat. In fact, the stress of not eating (strict diets) can increase inflammation that is caused by autoimmunes, which are usually tied tightly with out emotional state.

[carorees]

The article made me wonder whether fasting starves the sugar eating bacteria and breaking one's fast with vegetables and/or one of those probiotic choices mentioned in the article may help to increase the population of good bacteria.

That's interesting! What about breaking the fast with coffee. Good, bad or neutral? (Coffee with milk, no sugar.)