The fact that a healthy gut can improve your well-being and maintain your fitness levels is no secret.
When your gut is unhealthy, it’s difficult to control your weight, your immunity isn’t as effective, and your heart and brain might also be impacted.
So, with that in mind, there are a number of foods that you need to avoid to ensure your gut remains healthy, as we explain below.
Foods To Avoid To Maintain A Healthy Gut
1. Excess sugar
Although the body requires sugar to function, too much sugar is bad for you and can impact your body in a whole host of negative ways. When you eat sugar, it is absorbed by the upper section of your gut.
However, when your sugar intake reaches a certain level, it moves down to the lower section of your gut, which is where the vast majority of your healthy bacteria can be found.
As a result, the excess sugar can prevent healthy bacteria from colonising your gut, which leaves space for unhealthy bacteria to thrive. Therefore, limit your daily sugar intake to 24g (women) or 36g (men).
2. Highly processed foods
If eaten infrequently, highly processed foods won’t do you a great deal of harm. However, if they make up a substantial part of your diet, they will cause issues for your gut. Typically, foods that are highly processed contain very little fibre.
Instead, they are high in fat and sugars that your body digests quickly. As a result, there is very little food available for your gut microbes, which love to eat complex fibres found in whole foods like nuts, fruits and vegetables.
In the UK, most people take just 18g of fibre a day, which is way short of the recommended 30g. Although it’s difficult to change your eating habits, try and switch out foods like crisps and sweets for seeds, nuts, and fruits if you can.
3. Alcohol
Drinking too much alcohol can negatively impact so many aspects of your general health and well-being, and the gut is no exception. Specifically, alcohol is known to reduce the strength of your gut wall, which can lead to a condition known as leaky gut.
As a result, you become more susceptible to a range of bad bacteria and toxins that pass through the wall and into your bloodstream. To help you plan your alcohol consumption, you should aim for no more than fourteen units per week.
4. Red meat
When enjoyed as part of a healthy diet, red meat isn’t bad for you. However, generally speaking, microbes prefer plant-based foods over animal products. Eating excessive amounts of red meat can be a problem due to a compound called L-carnitine.
When broken down by your gut microbes, it produces TMAO, a chemical that can harm the health of your heart. Consider halving the amount of red meat you add to your lasagne, replacing it instead with lentils – this is a great way to limit your consumption.
Consider a Gut Health Supplement
In addition to improving your diet and limiting your intake of certain foods, taking a gut health supplement can be an excellent way of boosting the health of your gut. Sons’ gut health supplement is effective in 9/10 men, and when taken regularly, it can improve your overall health and well-being.
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