One Health, Fermented Foods, and Gut Microbiota

Abstract

Changes in present-day society such as diets with more sugar, salt, and saturated fat, bad habits and unhealthy lifestyles contribute to the likelihood of the involvement of the microbiota in inflammatory diseases, which contribute to global epidemics of obesity, depression, and mental health concerns. The microbiota is presently one of the hottest areas of scientific and medical research, and exerts a marked influence on the host during homeostasis and disease. Fermented foods and beverages are generally defined as products made by microbial organisms and enzymatic conversions of major and minor food components. Further to the commonly-recognized effects of nutrition on the digestive health (e.g., dysbiosis) and well-being, there is now strong evidence for the impact of fermented foods and beverages (e.g., yoghurt, pickles, bread, kefir, beers, wines, mead), produced or preserved by the action of microorganisms, on general health, namely their significance on the gut microbiota balance and brain functionality. Fermented products require microorganisms, i.e., Saccharomyces yeasts and lactic acid bacteria, yielding alcohol and lactic acid. Ingestion of vibrant probiotics, especially those contained in fermented foods, is found to cause significant positive improvements in balancing intestinal permeability and barrier function. Our guts control and deal with every aspect of our health. How we digest our food and even the food sensitivities we have is linked with our mood, behavior, energy, weight, food cravings, hormone balance, immunity, and overall wellness. We highlight some impacts in this domain and debate calls for the convergence of interdisciplinary research fields from the United Nations’ initiative. Worldwide human and animal medicine are practiced separately; veterinary science and animal health are generally neither considered nor inserted within national or international Health discussions. The absence of a clear definition and subsequent vision for the future of One Health may act as a barrier to transdisciplinary collaboration. The point of this mini review is to highlight the role of fermented foods and beverages on gut microbiota and debate if the need for confluence of transdisciplinary fields of One Health is feasible and achievable, since they are managed by separate sectors with limited communication.

An Animal Study to Compare Hepatoprotective Effects Between Fermented Rice Bran and Fermented Rice Germ and Soybean in a Sprague-Dawley Rat Model of Alcohol-Induced Hepatic Injury

“…According to several previously published studies, fermented foods have beneficial effects on the gastrointestinal tract system. Moreover, recent studies have shown that supplementation of fermented foods had beneficial effects in improving symptoms of type 2 diabetes mellitus, impaired glucose metabolism, obesity, irritable bowel syndrome, hyperlipidemia, hypertension and osteoporosis [2,3,7,[51][52][53][54][55][56][57].…”

Dietary Components That May Influence the Disturbed Gut Microbiota in Chronic Kidney Disease

“…The fermentation of food with bacteria or yeast provides an anaerobic complex pathway, during which sugars are transformed by fermentation into ethanol and CO 2 (alcoholic fermentation) or lactic acid. The lactic acid bacteria produce foods, such as cheese, soymilk, yoghurt, pickles, bread, etc, and the alcoholic process produce wine and beers [110,111].…”

Evaluation of primer pairs for microbiome profiling across a food chain from soils to humans within the One Health framework

“…During the past decade, however, microbial communities (or microbiomes) have been shown to play important roles in connecting the humans, plants, animals and environment (van Bruggen et al, 2019). Thus, recommendations have been made to extend the One Health concept to include the full breadth of microbes (Bell et al, 2018;Trinh et al, 2018;van Bruggen et al, 2019). Adopting a microbiome perspective may strengthen the One Health concept due to i) the vital services provided by microbiomes to overall ecosystem health, ii) the importance of microbiome processes for the transfer of energy, matter and chemicals between compartments along the food chain, and iii) the important contribution of microbiomes to the health of the different hosts and compartments.…”