Plant diversity, with the symbolic goal of 30 types of plants per week, is the primary lever for optimizing the diversity and health of our intestinal ecosystem.

noli's read

The scientific community strongly converges on the idea that a variety of plant sources is beneficial, although it debates the practical modalities (minimum quantities, definition of a 'plant'). The 'American Gut' study (McDonald et al., 2018, a large-scale observational study) effectively supports that greater plant diversity is correlated with better microbiome diversity. However, the idea that a specific number like '30' is a strict biological threshold is a simplification; it is more of an educational benchmark than a clinical standard validated by controlled trials. The assertion that fiber is useless in a low-carbohydrate high-fat (LCHF) diet is a speculative extrapolation, because while butyrate production may vary, fiber plays other crucial metabolic roles. There is no robust evidence defining the minimum amount of each food required for it to be counted toward the microbiome. In summary, diversity is a recognized driver of health, but the quantitative details remain largely empirical.

the sources

1. 1McDonald D et al. (American Gut Project) 2018
2. 2Reynolds A et al. 2019
3. 3r/ScientificNutrition