Simple Sugars Wipe Out Beneficial Gut Bugs - Scientific American
▻https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/simple-sugars-wipe-out-beneficial-gut-bugs
“[...] what our work actually shows is that both fructose and sucrose do make it to the colon where the microbiota exist. And second that these sugars impact a good bacterium even though nutrition is not involved.”
In other words, the bacteria are not using fructose and sucrose as food. Instead, the sugars serve as signals that shut down production of a protein that beneficial Bacteroides need to colonize the intestine. The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Guy E. Townsend II et al., Dietary sugar silences a colonization factor in a mammalian gut symbiont]
Groisman says he’d like to explore whether complex polysaccharides can save Bacteroides from this sugary death sentence. Because then maybe we can eat cake and have our gut bugs too.