Reversing westernized diet effects: A Tanzanian dietary intervention with traditional fermented beer.
The worldwide shift from ancestral eating habits toward heavily processed diets is fueling a sharp increase in chronic metabolic disorders. These rapid nutritional transitions, especially common in expanding urban areas, significantly modify the composition of the human gut microbiota. Still, it is not well known whether a gut microbiome already altered by modern urban living can be successfully rehabilitated through brief exposures to traditional foods. Conducting a dietary intervention in Tanzania, we show that a highly processed diet quickly destabilizes the gut diversity of rural individuals, while the urban microbiome shows strong resistance to recovery when introducing a standard traditional diet. Interestingly, consuming a traditional fermented drink successfully brings back ancestral bacterial and fungal lineages, including yeast strains that actively support a balanced immune environment. Our results highlight how vulnerable rural microbiomes are to modern diets, demonstrating that reversing urbanization-induced microbiome loss calls for targeted, microbe-dense dietary interventions rather than basic macronutrient modifications, offering a vital framework for addressing industrial diseases.
The worldwide shift from ancestral eating habits toward heavily processed diets is fueling a sharp increase in chronic metabolic disorders. These rapid nutritional transitions, especially common in expanding urban areas, significantly modify the composition of the human gut microbiota. Still, it is not well known whether a gut microbiome already altered by modern urban living can be successfully rehabilitated through brief exposures to traditional foods. Conducting a dietary intervention in Tanzania, we show that a highly processed diet quickly destabilizes the gut diversity of rural individuals, while the urban microbiome shows strong resistance to recovery when introducing a standard traditional diet. Interestingly, consuming a traditional fermented drink successfully brings back ancestral bacterial and fungal lineages, including yeast strains that actively support a balanced immune environment. Our results highlight how vulnerable rural microbiomes are to modern diets, demonstrating that reversing urbanization-induced microbiome loss calls for targeted, microbe-dense dietary interventions rather than basic macronutrient modifications, offering a vital framework for addressing industrial diseases.