Food Choices to Grow Your Gut Garden
A healthy gut is a healthy body.
Written by Brandi McMurry
Photo by Shelley Pauls on Unsplash
We live in a world where convenience is key, and time is of the essence. Drive-thrus are plentiful, and processed foods are easy. Managing your digestion can be quite challenging because there is so much information to wade through!
Today we will discuss a few key factors that can help heal your gut garden with food.
Fermented Foods
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Fermented foods can help heal your gut and grow your gut garden.
Foods such as yogurt with live cultures, kimchi, sauerkraut, and pickled vegetables are rich in probiotics that help diversify your gut garden with good gut bacteria.
The diversity of gut bacteria can help bring balance to your body for optimal digestion.
When your gut microbiome is unbalanced you can oftentimes experience symptoms that you would not necessarily relate to digestion, such as — brain fog, attention difficulty, insomnia, mood swings and irritability, bad breath, skin irritants, joint pain, and inflammation.
Fiber
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Fiber is essential for a balanced gut garden and helpful for digestion. Fiber is the part of the food that the body cannot break down and helps to soften your stool.
Our bodies rely on both soluble and insoluble fiber to create ideal homeostasis in our guts.
Soluble fiber dissolves in water and creates a gel-like substance that helps lubricate the colon, making digestive motility easier.
Insoluble fiber does not dissolve in water but instead helps to create the bulk of the stool.
Your gut has approximately 100 trillion live bacteria living in it, some good and some bad, all of which are very hungry and demand to be fed! Ideally, the good gut bacteria known as probiotics will outweigh the bad gut bacteria.
The probiotics in your gut feed off of prebiotics. Prebiotic is just a fancy word for fiber!
If you take a daily probiotic supplement, make sure you are also ingesting fiber for the good bacteria to eat, to grow a healthy gut garden.
Organic Foods
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Organic foods are essential for a healthy gut garden.
Unfortunately, we live in a world that focuses on production and sacrifices quality. Many farms add chemicals to their crops and livestock to create larger quantities to sell.
To avoid ingesting carcinogenic substances that our bodies cannot digest, opt for organic foods.
Many foods in the United States are banned in other countries because they cause side effects in humans.
Focus on eating whole organic foods with as few ingredients as possible to get the most health benefits from your food.
These are the top 15 foods to buy organic according to University Health News.
Strawberries
Spinach
Kale, collard and mustard greens
Nectarines
Apples
Grapes
Cherries
Peaches
Pears
Bell and hot peppers
Celery
Tomatoes
In conclusion
Digestive complaints are among the most common reasons why someone will schedule an appointment with their doctor.
To grow your gut garden consider incorporating more fermented foods into your diet to more diversity of good gut bacteria. Foods rich in fiber including leafy greens, fruits, and cruciferous vegetables as well as whole grains are essential for your good gut bacteria to feed on and thrive. Fiber also helps to lubricate the colon making it easier to have a bowel movement and helps create the balk of your stool. Opt for organic foods whenever possible to limit the number of toxins in your gut garden.
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