Our body contains at least 10 times as many bacteria as human cells, and new research is documenting the dramatic impact that these microbes have on our health.
The human microbiome was the subject of an international Gut Microbiota for Health meeting in Barcelona this March and a featured lecture by Mark Heiman, Ph.D, vice president and chief science officer for MicroBiome Therapeutics at the IFT Annual Meeting & Food Expo in Chicago this July. Research on the human microbiome is demonstrating that reduced microbial diversity is associated with many different diseases and suboptimal health conditions. One way to bolster the diversity of the gut is to consume fermented foods, including dairy foods that contain probiotics.