The Good Gut: Taking Control of Your Weight, Your Mood, and Your Long-term Health

by Justin Sonnenburg

When people make the transition from independent living to a long-term-care facility, their diet also undergoes a transition. The higher-fiber diet that typified the community dwellers and those in the day hospital gives way to a diet that is markedly lower in fiber in the long-term-care facility. While the reason for the fiber-poor diets in these facilities is not clear, decreased fiber is common in food prepared in cafeteria-like settings, and the problem may be compounded by a desire to make food easy to chew for the elderly. This difference in fiber consumption mirrored the differences seen in microbiota composition. People on a low-fiber diet had a lower-diversity microbiota, whereas a high-fiber diet made for higher microbiota diversity. The higher-fiber-eating community elders also had more health-promoting SCFAs, lower markers of inflammation, and in general were in better health.