The Impact of Food Additives on the Abundance and Composition of Gut Microbiota

Abstract

The gut microbiota has been confirmed as an important part in human health, and is even take as an ‘organ’. The interaction between the gut microbiota and host intestinal environment plays a key role in digestion, metabolism, immunity, inflammation, and diseases. The dietary component is a major factor that affects the composition and function of gut microbiota. Food additives have been widely used to improve the color, taste, aroma, texture, and nutritional quality of processed food. The increasing variety and quantity of processed food in diets lead to increased frequency and dose of food additives exposure, especially artificial food additives, which has become a concern of consumers. There are studies focusing on the impact of food additives on the gut microbiota, as long-term exposure to food additives could induce changes in the microbes, and the gut microbiota is related to human health and disease. Therefore, the aim of this review is to summarize the interaction between the gut microbiota and food additives.

Feeding with resistant maltodextrin suppresses excessive calorie intake in a high-fat diet, mediated by changes in mouse gut microbiota composition, appetite-related gut hormone secretion, and neuropeptide transcriptional levels

“…The reasons would be that we fed the FMT-recipient mice (the FMT-HFD-cellulose and FMT-HFD-RMD groups) with same food including only water-insoluble dietary fiber (cellulose) after the FMT. Indeed, previous studies have shown that water-insoluble dietary fiber decreases the production of SCFAs (Tahara et al, 2018), and that the gut microbiota composition changes rapidly after dietary ingestion and responds rapidly to the altered diet (Zhou et al, 2023). Therefore, we hypothesized that the gut bacteria induced by the RMD feeding would be present in the intestinal of the FMT-HFD-RMD group until a few days after the FMT.…”

“…Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, and Proteobacteria comprise ~90% of the gut microbiota and food, especially dietary fiber, easily influence the gut composition (Jandhyala et al, 2015). Studies of the relationship between appetite regulation and the gut microbiota composition (Han et al, 2021) have revealed that dietary habits influence the gut microbiota composition (Bäckhed et al, 2005;Cuevas-Sierra et al, 2019;Zhou et al, 2023). Therefore, we aimed to clarify whether dietary fiber could regulate food intake by altering the gut microbiota composition.…”

Nutritional Biomarkers for the Prediction of Response to Anti-TNF-α Therapy in Crohn’s Disease: New Tools for New Approaches

“…The analysis of daily calorie and macronutrient intakes reveals no significant differences between the two groups of patients (CD-A and CD-R), both six months into anti-TNF-α therapy (V3) and prior to its initiation (V1). Also, caloric intake from ultra-processed foods, with several of their ingredients having negative effects on the intestinal microbiome [ 15 ], was completely similar between the two groups. However, the analysis of the nutritional patterns shows some differences, with a lower calcium intake in the CD-A group at V3.…”

Artemisia spp. Essential Oils: From Their Ethnobotanical Use to Unraveling the Microbiota Modulation Potential

“…EOs [14], including AA-EO and AAb-EO, are known, nothing is known regarding their impact on the intestinal microbiota when used in the culinary tradition, as food additives or used in the formulation of functional foods. In a recent review, Zhou X and colleagues [34] highlighted that the long-term exposure to natural or synthetic additives could induce changes in the microbiota responsible for various pathologies; on the other hand, there is a large body of literature indicating that the careful choice of natural additive could confer beneficial effects for the intestinal microbiota. Therefore, the study of the impact of natural additives obtained from aromatic plants on the microbiota or on probiotic strains used in traditional or functional foods is important both to validate their traditional use in cooking and to select the best spices to include as extracts in food and drinks.…”