Eating more mushrooms may be good for your gut health

HIGHLIGHTS

• Next time you order a pizza or whip up a creamy risotto, go ahead and load on the mushrooms.

• Adding more of the edible fungi into your diet may be one way to counteract the health risks associated with the Western-style diet (WSD), which often features an abundance of fatty foods and added sugars.

• Fatty and sugary foods contribute to obesity, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, certain cancers and a host of other chronic health issues.

• Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst investigated how modifiable factors such as diet and lifestyle and their metabolically related gene variants interact to influence the development of chronic diseases.

• The team focused on identifying metabolic targets to prevent or treat obesity and insulin resistance.

• “Intestinal dysfunction is thought to be one of the underlying mechanisms that contribute so significantly to the development of WSD-related diseases,” said nutritionist Zhenhua Liu, Associate Professor in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the varsity.

• In a previous research, the team found that a rarely studied bacterium, Turicibacter, is almost completely depleted by high fat diet-induced obesity, but not genetic obesity.

• But they found that sundried oyster mushrooms, found throughout most of the world, possesses a unique dietary composition rich with multiple nutrients lacking in the Western-style diet, such as dietary fibre and vitamin D.

• “It’s a perfect supplement as a natural whole food to improve the quality of Western-style diets, with the added benefit of improving our overall gut health,” Liu said.

• Liu’s study will examine the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which these mushrooms improve gut health.

• Specifically, the team will examine the mushroom’s interaction with Turicibacter in Western-style diet-related intestinal dysfunction and the effect it may have on reshaping gut microbiome.

• “We hope this study will provide the mechanistic understanding of the role of Turicibacter in dietary obesity and gut health,” Liu said.

• “It will also provide important insight into mushrooms as a whole-food approach to improve the quality of WSD and gut health.”