U.S. Department of Agriculture revealed many healthy adults who eat a diverse diet with at least 8-10 grams of soluble fiber daily have fewer antibiotic resistant microbes in their gut.
According to a May 10 USDA news release, the new information was shared in a study published by Agricultural Research Service scientists and colleagues in mBio.
“Surprisingly, the most important predictor of low levels of ARG, even more than fiber, was the diversity of the diet,” Danielle Lemay, research molecular biologist with the ARS Western Human Nutrition Research Center and leader of the study, said in the release. “This suggests that we may want to eat from diverse sources of foods that tend to be higher in soluble fiber for maximum benefit.”
Microbes resistant to many commonly used antibiotics, such as tetracycline and aminoglycoside, are a major line of risk to people around the world, with widespread hope the problem of antimicrobial resistance, the term which refers to bacteria, viruses and fungi holding up against antibiotics, is likely to get worse in the coming decades, according to the release.
“And the results lead directly to the idea that modifying the diet has the potential to be a new weapon in the fight against antimicrobial resistance,” Lemay said, according to the release. “And we're not talking about eating some exotic diet either, but a diverse diet, adequate in fiber, that some Americans already eat.”
