What you ate as a child can make or break your health, according to this study

It doesn’t matter what your eating habits are now, as this study suggests that kids who eat a diet rich in sugar and fat are susceptible to bad health for life.
childhood obesity
Keep your child's unhealthy eating habits in check. Image courtesy: Shutterstock
ANI Updated: 8 Feb 2021, 19:38 pm IST
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If you have been eating healthy—limiting your sugar and fat intake for the sake of a disease-free life, then we’ve got some news. It doesn’t matter what your eating habits are as an adult if you ate too much fat and sugar as a child. Because according to this study, an unhealthy diet in childhood can alter your microbiome for life.

The study by UC Riverside researchers is one of the first to show a significant decrease in the total number and diversity of gut bacteria in mature mice fed an unhealthy diet as juveniles.

“We studied mice, but the effect we observed is equivalent to kids having a Western diet, high in fat and sugar and their gut microbiome still being affected up to six years after puberty,” explained UCR evolutionary physiologist Theodore Garland.

A paper describing the study has recently been published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

What is gut microbiome?

The microbiome refers to all the bacteria as well as fungi, parasites, and viruses that live on and inside a human or animal. Most of these microorganisms are found in the intestines, and most of them are helpful, stimulating the immune system, breaking down food, and helping synthesize key vitamins.

In a healthy body, there is a balance of pathogenic and beneficial organisms. However, if the balance is disturbed, either through the use of antibiotics, illness, or an unhealthy diet—the body could become susceptible to disease.

childhood diet
A healthy gut can keep you safe from covid-19. Image courtesy: Shutterstock

In this study, Garland’s team looked for impacts on the microbiome after dividing their mice into four groups: half fed the standard, ‘healthy’ diet, half-fed the less healthy ‘Western’ diet, half with access to a running wheel for exercise, and a half without.

After three weeks spent on these diets, all mice were returned to a standard diet and no exercise, which is normally how mice are kept in a laboratory. At the 14-week mark, the team examined the diversity and abundance of bacteria in the animals.

They found that the quantity of bacteria such as Muribaculum intestinale was significantly reduced in the Western diet group. This type of bacteria is involved in carbohydrate metabolism.

Your gut bacteria also responds to exercise

Analysis also showed that the gut bacteria are sensitive to the amount of exercise the mice got. Muribaculum bacteria increased in mice fed a standard diet who had access to a running wheel and decreased in mice on a high-fat diet whether they had exercise or not.

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Researchers believe this species of bacteria, and the family of bacteria that it belongs to, might influence the amount of energy available to its host. Research continues into other functions that this type of bacteria may have.

childhood diet
Sip on this comfort tea to keep gut problems at bay. Image courtesy: Shutterstock

One other effect of note was the increase in a highly similar bacteria species that were enriched after five weeks of treadmill training in a study by other researchers, suggesting that exercise alone may increase its presence.

Overall, the UCR researchers found that early-life Western diet had more long-lasting effects on the microbiome than did early-life exercise.

Regardless of when the effects first appear, however, the researchers say it’s significant that they were observed so long after changing the diet, and then changing it back.The takeaway, Garland said, is essentially, “You are not only what you eat, but what you ate as a child!”

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