Research
Mixed
High HDD diets shift gut microbial community composition from fiber-degrading taxa (e.g., Prevotella) to mucin-degrading taxa (e.g., Bacteroides, Akkermansia) due to nutrient limitation.
If you eat a diet low in fiber and high in processed ingredients, your gut bacteria may shift to eat your gut lining (mucin) instead of your food. To encourage beneficial fiber-eating bacteria, increase your intake of whole plant foods.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
High HDD diets reduce diet-derived nutrient availability for gut microbial communities, reducing their density and shifting overall microbial community composition, particularly from fiber-degraders to mucin-degraders.
Why this rating
Supported by multiple cross-sectional and intervention studies cited in the text.
Source
Decoupled Nutrient Status: a framework to disentangle host from microbial responses to diets that vary in digestibility
Emily M. Venable et al. · Frontiers in Food Science and Technology · 2024
DOI 10.3389/frfst.2024.1469470
narrative_reviewCited 3×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- High host-driven digestibility (HDD) diets, such as ultra-processed foods, decouple host and microbial nutrient status by maximizing small intestinal absorption, which leads to host energy surplus and gut microbial nutrient limitation.Good
- Humans have evolved anatomical and physiological adaptations (elongated small intestine, reduced colon) that exacerbate the decoupling of host and microbial nutrient status compared to other primates.Moderate
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