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By Matthew Rees

Food and Health Fact #105: The human biome, fiber, and flatulence

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This week's "food for thought" excerpt comes from Fat Nation: A History of Obesity in America (2018), by Jonathan Engel.

“The billions of bacteria that live symbiotically in our intestines are critical to proper digestion. In particular, these bacteria, collectively known as the human biome, break up fermenting soluble fiber into short-chain fatty acids, which produce roughly 10 percent of our energy. . . . The short-chain fatty acids produced by a healthy biome do produce more calories for the body, but they also act as an important mechanism to signal satiation. Incidentally, bacterial activity in the gut produces a lot of flatulence as a by-product, which turns out to be the mark of both a healthy, fiber-rich diet and a healthy biome. David Lustig, a prominent obesity researcher, pithily notes that our choice comes down to ‘fart or fat.’”