Reboot your Microbiome - Sunshine Coast Nutritionist

Food to Reboot your Microbiome
The essential part of rebooting your microbiome is large amounts of the type of plant fibre that isn’t completely digested, giving food to your microbiome. Complex Carbohydrates like vegetables, lentils and beans are high in fibre, and so don’t cause a spike in blood sugar and insulin. When we don’t eat enough plant fibre we starve the essential microbes in our gut.
 
The following are complex carbohydrates that provide good food for your microbiome:

1. Resistant starches don’t get digested in the small intestine. They travel through the gut to the large intestine where they are fermented by the gut bacteria to produce short chain fatty acids (SCFA’s) like Butryate. These provide food for colonic cells, are anti-inflammatory, and encourage the growth of healthy microbes in the colon by acting as a prebiotic food for them. The diversity of plants you eat will be reflected in the diversity of the microbiome.                                                                                   

These foods are high in resistant starch – shown as grams resistant starch / 100g food:                                

• Baked potato cooled and reheated  19.2g
• Rice cooked, cooled and reheated    5.5g
• Corn cooked, cooled and reheated   4.4g
• Peas cooked, cooled and reheated   6.7g
• Split peas                                          10.0g
• Chick peas cooked, cooled               6.35g
• Cashews                                           13.0g
• Green bananas (boiled and mashed like potato), green banana flour in baked goods  35.0g
• Buckwheat flour in baked goods       16.0g      
• Red Lentils                                        13.8g
• White Cannellini Beans, Black beans, Red kidney beans 17.3g
• Bean Vermicelli noodles                      4.4g

 
 2.  Inulin also feeds your healthy microbes - the following foods are high in Inulin:

•  Onions, leeks & garlic
•  Asparagus
•  Artichokes
•  Ripe bananas

  3.  Fermented Foods contain live bacteria to repopulate your gut as well as prebiotic fibre

• Sauerkraut, Kimchi, fermented Pickles, Kvass

 
  4.  Substitute friends for foes

• Use zucchini noodles instead of wheat pasta
• Roast sweet potato (higher in fibre) instead of French fries
• Cauliflower rice instead of white rice
• Pumpkin or sweet potato or red lentils to thicken stews and sauces instead of flour
• Whipped frozen banana instead of ice cream
• Frozen berries and coconut yoghurt instead of ice cream
• Almond cupcakes instead of wheat cake
• Hummus and carrot or celery sticks as a snack
• Cooked and cooled pasta or rice instead of fresh cooked (to increase the resistant starch)
• Saurkraut instead of tomato sauce as a condiment with meat
• Almond milk instead of dairy milk
• Honey instead of sugar, & at least halve the amount in any recipe
• Whole fruit instead of fruit juice
• Soda and lime juice instead of soft drink

 When you decide to reboot your Microbiome as part of your health plan, call Sunshine Coast Nutritionist and Kinesiologist Karen Emans on 0408 748 532

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