Super Gut: A Four-Week Plan to Reprogram Your Microbiome, Restore Health, and Lose Weight

by William Davis

Which factors can you correct or change now to prepare your garden of bowel flora? • Avoid sugars: Sugars are to bowel flora as breadcrumbs are to birds and ducks: they will take the bait. Consume, say, sugary soft drinks or snacks, and you are delivering bacteria and fungi an invitation to ascend and proliferate. Lots of sugar in your diet is a virtually guaranteed setup for both SIBO and SIFO. • Avoid synthetic noncaloric sweeteners: Avoid all foods sweetened with aspartame, sucralose, or saccharine. These include sugar-free sodas, ice creams, frozen yogurts, chewing gum, and other processed foods containing these ingredients. • Banish processed foods that contain emulsifying agents: We’ve discussed how polysorbate 80 and carboxymethylcellulose not only degrade the mucus lining but also provoke unhealthy changes in bowel flora species and increase intestinal permeability that leads to increased appetite, weight gain, and inflammation and sets us up for autoimmune conditions. We do not yet know how far and wide this applies to other less-potent emulsifiers such as carrageenan, propylene glycol, and lecithin. Until the details are sorted out, we follow a commonsense rule: choose natural whole foods such as avocados, eggs, green vegetables, and others that have no added synthetic ingredients. When buying processed foods, look for brands with the shortest list of ingredients that you can recognize by name. Choose, for instance, salad dressings with olive oil, vinegar, salt, ...