Children’s diets have a lifelong impact, study finds

Eating too much fat and sugar as a child can alter your lifelong microbiome, even if you later learn to eat healthier, a new study in mice suggests.

The study conducted by researchers at UC Riverside is one of the first to show a significant decrease in the total number and diversity of gut bacteria in mature mice fed an unhealthy diet as juveniles.

“We studied mice, but the effect we observed is equivalent to the fact that children eat a Western diet, which is high in fat and sugar, and their gut microbiome is still affected for up to six years after puberty,” UCR evolutionary physiologist Theodore Garland explained.

An article describing the study was recently published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

The microbiome refers to all bacteria as well as fungi, parasites and viruses that live on and inside a human or animal. Most of these microorganisms are found in the intestines, and most of them are helpful, boosting the immune system, breaking down food, and helping to synthesize key vitamins.

In a healthy body, there is a balance between pathogenic and beneficial organisms. However, if the balance is disturbed, whether through the use of antibiotics, illness, or an unhealthy diet, the body can become vulnerable to disease.

In this study, Garland’s team researched the impacts on the microbiome after dividing their mice into four groups: half fed the standard and “ healthy ” diet, the other half the “ Western ” diet. less healthy, the other half with access to a wheel for exercise, and half without.

After three weeks spent on these diets, all of the mice were returned to a standard, exercise-free diet, which is normally how mice are kept in a lab. After 14 weeks, the team examined the diversity and abundance of bacteria in the animals.

They found that the amount of bacteria such as intestinal Muribaculum was significantly reduced in the western food group. This type of bacteria is involved in the metabolism of carbohydrates.

The analysis also showed that gut bacteria are sensitive to the amount of exercise mice do. Muribaculum bacteria increased in mice fed a standard diet that had access to a racing wheel, and decreased in mice on a high-fat diet whether or not they exercised.

Researchers believe that this species of bacteria and the family of bacteria to which it belongs could influence the amount of energy available to its host. Research is continuing on other functions that this type of bacteria may have.

Another effect of note was the increase of a very similar bacterial species that became enriched after five weeks of treadmill training in a study by other researchers, suggesting that exercise alone may increase its presence. .

Overall, the UCR researchers found that the Western diet early in life had more lasting effects on the microbiome than exercise early in life.

Garland’s team would like to repeat this experiment and take samples at additional times, to better understand when changes in mouse microbiomes first appear and if they extend into even later stages of life.

Regardless of when the effects first appear, however, researchers say it’s significant that they were seen so long after changing the diet and then after changing it.

The takeaway, Garland said, is essentially, “You are not just what you eat, but what you ate as a child!”

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