Whole Food Prebiotics

A healthy “prebiotic” diet for probiotic bacteria includes a diverse range of whole foods particularly plants.  Mother Nature uses a holistic approach to prebiotics - not an isolates approach involving a single prebiotic nutrient like inulin isolated from a single plant like chicory. Plant nutrients are essential building blocks needed by probiotic bacteria to make certain types of postbiotics which are vital to our health.  

Imagine plant nutrients as a giant Lego set.  If the probiotics have a wide range of shapes and sizes they can construct almost any postbiotic using nutrients as the raw ingredients.  But if they’re fed a diet consisting of only one processed nutrient isolate, or only 1-2 foods, they’ll lack the building blocks needed for creating a complete range of health generating postbiotics. Phytonutrients found in the outer fibres of plants are among the most concentrated anti-oxidants on the planet. Plant fibre contains valuable nutrients which are among the most resistant to break down and digest. This makes sense when you realize they’re part of nature’s strategy to help plant’s survive pathogenic organisms and insects.  The most powerful nutrients are condensed in the outer wall fibre for that reason.

Additionally,  other phytonutrients found in plant fibre such as the saponins have natural antibacterial effects. The word soap itself originates from the word saponins because they’re the antibacterial plant compound our ancestors used to make soap. Phytonutrients include over 8000 types of high anti-oxidant polyphenols- about 60% are types of flavonoids and 30% are types of lignans.  Many of the phytonutrients found within indigestible fibres are unavailable to mammals (including humans) without good bacteria turning them into a nutrient postbiotic. For example,  enterolignans or mammalian lignans are the names given to digestible postbiotics created from indigestible plant lignans.  Some of the highest concentration of phytonutrients are found in herbs which is why our ancestors relied on them for healing.

Herbs in fermented form are even more valuable as probiotic bacteria have already broken their phytonutrients into beneficial forms humans can absorb.