Health guru Professor Tim Spector has claimed that people should be adding two things to your diet to boost your gut health.
The Zoe co-founder has long since talked about the importance of our gut to maintaining our overall health and pinpointed one food type that we can add to our diets to help in doing that: “Fermented food, has been shown thanks to a study from Stamford to have anti-inflammatory affects.”
Continuing his health advice, Professor Spector told the Zoe podcast: “Which means we get this boost of extra microbes that are in food and the probiotics in food, if you have them regularly, and we’re talking at least probably three times a day you’re getting a sample of it, can dampen down inflammation, keep your immune system in much better shape.”
The fermented Korean dish Kimchi has grown in popularity in recent years (stock)
(Image: Getty Images)
While Professor Spector highlighted the ability for fermented foods to reduce inflammation in the gut, Healthline have previously noted that when the gut does become inflamed, certain health issues can arise, including chronic constipation, fatigue and irregular periods.
Additionally, the health expert also gave an insight into another thing we should be doing to improve our gut health. While claiming that we should try to avoid ultra-processed foods, he did concede that it’s ‘pretty impossible to cut them out entirely.
Instead, he suggested that we should be trying to cut down our intake of ultra-processed foods to less than 10 per cent of our diet: “Because we know that there’s a pro-inflammatory reaction when you’re having a lot of these (ultra-processed) foods and it causes problems for your gut microbes as well as depriving them of fibre and normal nutrients.”
He added: “So that is what everyone should be aiming at is to shift more towards real food, you know less fake foods in their diet, plus getting more different fermented foods in their diet.”
The negative impact of ultra-processed foods on our health have been widely documented down the years and some health experts have found links and provided research between diets high in ultra-processed foods and serious health conditions including heart disease and certain types of cancer.