Microbial Diversity

topic

Microbial diversity — measured as the number and evenness of distinct microbial species in the gut — is the primary metric of microbiome health, with higher diversity consistently associated with better immune function, reduced inflammation, metabolic health, psychological wellbeing, and resilience to perturbation. Low diversity characterizes the gut microbiomes of populations eating industrialized diets, with the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania showing approximately 40% greater microbial diversity than average Americans consuming ultra-processed diets.

Role

Microbial diversity is the ecological equivalent of biodiversity — a system with many different species performing many different functions is more resilient to disruption and more functionally complete than a simplified system dominated by few species. The industrialized diet has functionally simplified the gut microbiome of modern populations in ways that have taken decades of disease to make manifest, with reduced diversity associated with the epidemic of autoimmune conditions, allergies, inflammatory bowel disease, and metabolic disorders whose explosion over the past 50 years corresponds temporally with the industrialization of the food supply. Rebuilding diversity through dietary variety — particularly diverse plant intake — is the primary nutritional microbiome intervention with the most robust evidence base.

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