The Soil Association gut challenge: organic for a month
Reporter Dianne Bourne and five members of the public took part in a trial to see what impact eating organic food and drink for a month would have on their gut health and well-being.
For this Soil Association led experiment, five public volunteers were recruited along with Dianne Bourne, Lifestyle Editor at the Manchester Evening News. They were each asked to submit a typical weekly food diary, so we could swap to organic versions of the food they typically ate.
Before the study, each volunteer committed to a 2-week control period of eating no organic food or drink. The gut microbiome, blood inflammation markers and intestinal permeability of each volunteer were then measured and recorded by The Functional Gut Clinic at the start of the study.
Each volunteer then committed to eating different amounts of organic food and drink for a month, with the different health markers measured again at the end of the month period.
While Dianne completely swapped all her diet to organic, the volunteers swapped different food groups to organic. No substantial differences to each individual’s diet were made. However, many of the participants did report that during the study they snacked less, and that they incorporated more portions of vegetables into their diet than previously.
Jordan Haworth, Clinical Gastrointestinal Physiologist at The Functional Gut Clinic had this comment on the final results:
“There was a clinically significant improvement in intestinal permeability, or leaky gut, amongst all participants. This may be due to a reduction in dietary pesticides, which have been shown to cause leaky gut, at least in animal studies. However, in humans, there are currently no studies showing pesticides in diet directly cause a leaky gut. There is some data which shows the prevalence of digestive disorders, specifically irritable bowel syndrome, and cognitive disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease, are more common in areas with high pesticide use. However, this seems to be related to environmental pesticide exposure, and not dietary pesticide exposure. Therefore, there is a need for studies on dietary pesticides and health in humans.”
“This experiment found that switching to more organic produce led to an improvement in leaky gut. Future studies should look to see if eating more organic can improve intestinal permeability in a larger sample, controlling well for diet, and to see if its particularly helpful for people with a clinically “leaky gut”.”
In terms of gut microbiome changes there wasn’t a massive difference for the group overall, but this can be explained by the relatively short time period the study was run for, as the gut microbiome stays pretty stable over such a short period of time.
However, it is worth noting there were some interesting changes in gut microbiome for some of the volunteers. Volunteer Four, who swapped all their fruit and vegetables to organic saw an increase in gut microbiome diversity. A higher gut diversity is linked to better gut health and better overall health outcomes. This individual also saw an increase in butyrate producing bacteria, which is important for regulating the gut lining.
Dianne had this to say at the end of the trial,
“While wider studies would be needed to clinically prove the benefits of eating organic, what I can say on a personal level is that I did feel an improvement in my own health and well-being after the month of organic eating.”
