Industrialisation has changed how consumers eat, and largely for the worse, critics argue. This is the argument behind the promotion of the paleo diet, a close relation of the massively popular ‘keto’ diet, which focuses on taking humans back to an older, pre-industrialised way of eating.
The Non-industrialized Microbiome Restore, or NiMe, diet does something similar, but with a very particular focus - the gut. This diet, which is based on the eating patterns of Papua New Guineans, moves away from industrialised food production with the express purpose of improving gut health.
Modern diets are ‘starving the microbiome,’ suggests researcher Jens Walter. Modern foods are low in dietary fibres, which particularly feed gut microbes. He suggests that both compositionally and structurally, processing has changed foods so that they are less beneficial to gut health.
Since a study on the diet in the journal Cell was published, it has taken the world by storm, being covered in a range of media from specialist publications to the tabloid press. But what exactly is it, and why has it captured the imagination?
What does the NiMe Diet consist of?
The NiMe diet consists of foods commonly eaten by Papua New Guineans, such as beans, rice, cabbage, cucumber and sweet potato.
It also includes foods high in raffinose and stachyose, such as peas, onions and Jerusalem artichokes. Raffinose and stachyose are growth substrates of the microbial species L. reuteri, which was chosen because it is found in the feces of Papua New Guineans but undetectable in test subjects from the US.
The diet is low in animal products, containing only a single serving of salmon, chicken or pork each day.
The diet consists of complex dietary fibres, explains Walter, replacing more refined carbohydrates such as potato and white rice.
It is devoid of wheat, beef and dairy, as they are not part of the Papua New Guinean traditional diet, and very low in highly processed foods.
It provides 60% of energy from carbohydrate, 25% from fat, and 15% from protein.
The study explored the effects of the diet on the health of its participants.
What are the health benefits of the NiMe Diet?
Industrialisation has, the study suggests, negatively impacted gut microbial diversity, increased pro-inflammatory microbial taxa, and decreased fibre fermentation, among other things.
The ambition of the diet, as outlined in the study, was no less than to reverse the effects of industrialisation on the microbiome. So did it succeed?
In a word, yes. While gut microbial diversity was in fact reduced, community interconnectedness and stability increased, and factors affected by industrialisation were reversed: fermentation capacity increased, for example, and pro-inflammatory microbes were reduced.
The diet altered the overall gut microbial community as well. A range of health-promoting gut bacteria were enriched during the diet period.
The diet also had pronounced effect on reducing the risk of non-communicable disease (NDC), and participants saw a ‘small but significant’ decrease in body weight. A number of types of cholesterol were reduced, and insulin sensitivity was increased.
These benefits, according to Walter, were directly related to a return to pre-industrial foods.
The diet was paired with a supplement of L. reuteri, in order to test whether the NiMe diet would make it more persistent. L. reuteri became more persistent during the study in some participants, but in only one did it actually colonise the gut.
Many of the health effects found by the study were in fact independent of L. reuteri.
Differences from the paleo diet
While both the paleo diet and the NiMe diet focus on pre-industrialised eating patterns, they are different in their approach. The paleo diet, points out Walter, has been criticised for being too meat-heavy. Anthropological research has suggested that, in fact, pre-industrialised populations often ate a more plant-based diet (although Walter stresses that there is no single pre-industrialised diet - for example, inuit populations in northern countries would eat far more meat than those in Papua New Guinea.)
Sourced From: Cell
‘Cardiometabolic benefits of a non-industrializedtype diet are linked to gut microbiome modulation’
Published on: 23 January 2025
Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2024.12.034
Authors: F. Li, A. M. Armet, K. Korpela, J. Liu1, R. M. Quevedo, F. Asnicar, B. Seethaler, T. B.S. Rusnak, J. L. Cole, Z. Zhang, S. Zhao, X. Wang, A. Gagnon, E. C. Deehan, J. F. Mota, J. A. Bakal, R. Greiner, D. Knights, N. Segata, S. C. Bischoff, L. Mereu, A. M. Haqq, C. J. Field, L. Li, C. M. Prado, J. Walter
