This germ warfare has been raging in the human gut for as long as humans have been around. But recently, breath taking changes in our diet has put us at a disadvantage. In order for our gut bugs to fight the good fight, they need nutrients and a critical component of that nutrient base is dietary fiber. By definition, dietary fiber is any part of a plant that cannot be digested and absorbed in the small intestine and ends up in the large bowel (colon). Once in the colon, dietary fiber is broken down and utilized by our good bugs for their own growth. This means, dietary fiber is not food for us but food for the trillions of bacteria that live in our colons. If you feed them, the bacteria will do their evolutionary job and make life a living hell for foreign pathogens.
Our modern genome and the symbiotic relationship we developed with our gut bugs was selected on a nutritional landscape very different from the one we find ourselves today. Our not-so-distant ancestors consumed between 50, 75 and up to often greater than 100 grams a day of dietary fiber. The average American today consumes between 12 to 15 grams. More importantly, our gut bugs evolved on a diet that included an extraordinary variety of fiber sources from hundreds of plants. Humans and our evolutionary hitchhikers went from a large quantity and diversity of fibers, to a small quantity and a limited diversity. We are literally starving our gut bugs to the point that we have opened the pathogen door just enough for E. coli 0157:H7 and its band of pathogenic brothers to compete successfully for nutrients and attachment sites. Not good.
The decrease in quantity and diversity of nutrient sources (dietary fiber) has created a nutritional tipping point in the germ warfare raging in the American gut. While increased oversight, inspections, sampling and stepping up good agricultural practices are important, there are simply too many contamination variables from plough to plate. So rather than look at the recent spike in outbreaks as a result of more pathogens in the food supply and sloppy farming, might the problem have more to do with our own dietary choices. That is, our breathtaking drop in the diversity and quantity of dietary fiber might be the real problem – or at least part of the problem. In other words, dare I say, there is some personal responsibility the American public has in this germ warfare.
When someone spends a lifetime smoking two packs a day, are they not aware that if they succumb to lung cancer, that it’s in affect their own fault? So where is the personal responsibility in our national discussion on food-borne illness and the produce industry we seek to blame? Rather than run from spinach, let us run to it.
As the amount of dietary fiber in the American diet continues to decrease – and probably even more so since last years outbreaks – and our ignorance of the consumers responsibility in this germ warfare continues, we may be seeing a perfect storm of our own creation – though unintended. The litigious atmosphere surrounding this perfect storm has already created the potential for a public that sees diarrhea as a result of a nasty microbe as something akin to a winning lottery ticket. And the situation is likely to get worse.
However, the public’s current mistrust of the produce industry may be an opportunity. Though tragic in its realization, the microscope the industry is currently under may provide a platform to explore some positive steps the industry might take in educating the public about how to increase their natural resistance to food-borne pathogens by returning the quantity and diversity of dietary fiber needed to support a healthy population of gut bugs. By consuming more vegetables and fruits, the American public may be able to add another weapon in our arsenal in our battle with food-borne pathogens and importantly, own some of the responsibility in this germ warfare. Currently, the consumer is totally unaware of the important role they play in keeping themselves and their family members healthy.
The produce industry does not need to wait until tomorrow to start this process, but start today. On September 14, 2006 the produce stepped through a door and there is no going back. It’s time to reposition produce in the American conciseness. The antioxidant and other micronutrient wagons the industry has hitched itself to in the past is tired and the American public has been yawning at that message for years. The American public needs a reason to eat more produce, something new, something fresh. Significant gains may be realized if produce is positioned more as fiber – that is, produce farmers are in fact fiber farmers. This “Fiber Defense Diet” may in fact play a role in a much need rallying call for produce in America and give consumers a very important reason to increase intake.
Some may suggest that the fiber defense argument for fighting food-borne pathogens is too simple, and therefore could not possible make a difference. And they may be right. However, the human immune system and accompanying colonization resistance mechanism that is facilitated by our own natural gut bugs, makes all external attempts such as fences, increased inspections, and triple washing look like child’s play. Our best defense has always been and will always be our natural resistance. Not nurturing our gut bugs with the nutrients they need has consequences. Continuing to ignore this basic tenant of human biology will only result in an increasing number of our fellow citizens in the emergency room and decreased sales at the farm gate.
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