5 Superfoods For Healthy Gut
A healthy gut means a healthy body. Gut health is something with which the entire body is connected and a well-functioning digestive system means a good mental health, strong immune system, clear skin and many more. Poor gut manifests as poor hormonal health, metabolic health, skin health and mental health too. Now you know it right that you need your gut in good shape for a healthy body and something directly related affecting the gut is food that we eat. Consuming just the right foods helps the gut to be a happy place for good bacteria and keeps the bad bacteria at bay. So let food be thy medicine and add these gut friendly foods to your diet to help get a healthy and disease free body.
1. Apples – You do not need to go out to find some fancy fruit you read or heard of for your gut. Rightly said, ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away.’ One of the most easily available and tasty super food is apple. Their nutrients and fibre aid in a healthy digestive system, especially the pectin content in apples. Pectin is not digested in the body and thus it reaches the colon, where the good bacteria thrive on it and increase their population.
2. Spinach – Popeye – the sailor man had spinach cans and you should definitely imitate him and add spinach leaves in your diet. The greener the leaves are, the better they are. This vegetable is rich in vitamin C, B, A and K and minerals such as manganese, folic acid, magnesium, iron. Also it has considerable amount of fibre too. All these promote the gut microbiome and also keep a person away from colon cancer. You can make soups and smoothies with spinach or make a vegetable of it.
3. Curd or yoghurt – If you aim to add a population of healthy bacteria in your tummy, the best way is to eat them. Curd or yoghurt is a great probiotic containing good and beneficial bacteria which give the gut an improved shape.
4. Oats – Talking about oats, its gut friendliness is attributed to its richness in fibre. Like oats, all the other whole grains too are great for the digestive health. This versatile whole grain can be cooked as a savoury as well as a sweet dish and keeps a person fuller for a longer duration. Also it aids in restoring the good bacteria in the gut by acting as a food to the healthy bacteria ‘prebiotic’. They act as a feed to the healthy probiotic bacteria and flourish their growth. The fibre namely beta glucans are directly linked to a healthy gut with oats consumption. Oats can be consumed daily as an evening snack, breakfast in the form of porridges, vegetable khichdi, muesli or smoothie. Consuming cold oatmeal as overnight oats is a great anti-inflammatory meal as overnight oats become rich in resistant starch that stimulates the production of short chain fatty acids and give a boost to the gut.
5. Almonds – For a significant improvement in the gut health, eat a handful of almonds a day. On eating almonds, there is a production of short chain fatty acid called butyrate, which acts as a fuel for the cells of the large intestine and promote the gut health. They also add various important nutrients to the diet that help in good digestion. Their gut friendliness is also attributed to the prebiotic fibre in almonds, their digestion releasing butyrate.
Improving gut health lays the foundation for the overall health and well-being of an individual. Worship your gut with the inclusion of healthy foods such as fresh, seasonal and raw fruits and vegetables, fibre rich whole grains, nuts and seeds as well as fermented foods rich in probiotics.
