Many people know that what you eat can affect your gut health.
But a new study from EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) shows that how often you eat healthy food may be just as important as what you eat.
Using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, researchers discovered that consistency in eating healthy meals plays a big role in the health of your gut microbiota.
The gut microbiota is the group of tiny organisms—like bacteria and viruses—that live in your digestive system. Some of them are good for your health, while others can be harmful. A healthy and diverse microbiota is linked to better digestion, immunity, and overall health.
We’ve long known that eating lots of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains helps improve gut health. These foods feed the good bacteria, making your gut stronger and more balanced. But what was less clear before this study is how important it is to eat these foods regularly—not just once in a while.
The new research was published in the journal Nature Communications. The team from EPFL’s Digital Epidemiology Lab, along with scientists from the University of California, San Diego, studied around 1,000 people.
They found that people who ate healthy foods consistently—day after day—had a more diverse and healthier gut microbiota than those who only ate healthy foods occasionally.
“This means you can’t just have a salad once a week and expect to see the same benefits as someone who eats fruits and vegetables every day,” said Associate Professor Marcel Salathé, who led the study. “Eating healthy foods regularly is what really helps your gut.”
In another part of the study, the researchers used AI to look at stool samples (poop) and food logs from participants. They found that they could predict a person’s diet based on their gut bacteria—and they could predict the gut bacteria based on what the person ate—with up to 85% accuracy.
This is a big deal because it’s often hard to get accurate information about people’s diets. Most studies rely on people remembering what they ate, which is not always reliable.
But by using an AI-powered app called MyFoodRepo, developed by EPFL, participants could take photos or scan barcodes of their meals. The app then used AI to figure out the nutritional content of each meal.
Lead author Rohan Singh explained that this method allowed them to collect high-quality data in real time. “It’s much more accurate and easier than asking people to write down everything they eat,” he said.
The findings suggest that public health guidelines should focus not only on eating the right kinds of food, but also on eating them regularly. The team is continuing to use the MyFoodRepo app to study how diet affects other areas of health, like brain performance and the effects of food additives on the gut.
In the future, this kind of AI technology could even help people get personalized advice on how to improve their gut health—just by analyzing what they eat and how often.
If you care about gut health, please read studies about a surprising link between gut health and eye disease risk and Gut troubles could signal future Parkinson’s disease.
For more about gut health, please read studies that this stuff in coffee and chocolate may impact gut health and Gut health is linked to anxiety levels.
The study is published in Nature Communications.
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