🍯 Adding honey to yoghurt ensures more probiotics reach the gut

If you enjoy plain yogurt in the morning, adding a spoonful of honey is a delicious way to boost the gut health benefits of yoghurt.

Two new studies showed how pairing honey with yogurt supported greater survival of the yogurt's probiotic bacteria in the gut.

Greek yogurt and other yogurts contain probiotic strains (like Bifidobacterium animalis), but these are mostly broken down by enzymes in our mouth, stomach, and intestine.

Adding honey, in particular clover honey, helped support the survival of yoghurt’s probiotics in the intestinal phase of digestion. Although adding honey did not improve survival in the mouth and stomach.

But honey is sugar right? Well, adding sugar rather than honey to yoghurt did not have any effect.

This shows how the myriad of biological compounds found in honey could be behind this positive effect, although we still don’t know the full mechanism.

However, it is true that honey is added sugar, especially poor quality honey where most beneficial compounds have been removed due to food processing. So it’s always best to source your honey from local trusted beekeepers if possible.

🥊 Punchline

Adding a little bit of honey to unsweetened yogurt is an easy way to ensure more beneficial bacteria reach your gut. You can go the extra mile to support your gut health by adding fibre-rich toppings, like fruits, nuts and seeds, to your yoghurt.

🥫 Trying to limit calories? Snack smarter and skip the side dip

On average, 25% of calories come from snacks.

Changing your snacking habits can be a very effective strategy to lower calorie intake. Even small changes can make a big difference.

Take fries for examples. If you order a bowl of fries as a snack, this is usually paired with dips or sauces, like mayo and ketchup.

A new study revealed that people eating fries with dips had a 77% greater caloric intake compared to those eating plain fries.

Both groups ate the same amount of fries, but it is the dips that pushed calorie intake over the edge.

You would think that adding something extra to a snack, like a dip, would mean eating less of the main item to compensate for extra food intake.

But this was not the case. This lack of compensation means that adding sauces and condiments to snacks can substantially increase overall energy intake without even realizing it.

Fun fact: there was a small difference. Those eating fries with dips ate slower but each helping was bigger as more fries were needed to ‘scoop up’ the dip.

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Snacking is a major source of calories, but simple changes like removing the dip can significantly lower calorie intake.

🦠 Ketogenic Diet helps with fat loss, but at what cost?

The ketogenic (keto) diet is a low carb, high fat diet that is mostly used for weight loss.

In the short term, a keto diet can have great results, but its efficacy long term is questionable sometimes.

A study at the university of Bath wanted to understand the effect of a keto diet on gut health.

When compared to a normal or low-sugar diet (less than 5% of calories from sugar) across 12 weeks, a keto low-carb diet with less than 8% of calories from carbs had many negative outcomes:

• Increased blood cholesterol levels, mainly LDL cholesterol

• Reduced beneficial gut bacteria, mainly Bifidobacteria species, due to the limited intake of fermentable fibers and resistant starch

• Reduced tolerance to blood sugar, meaning the body becomes less efficient at handling carbs after a meal. This is probably an adaptive response to eating less carbs day-to-day and reflects insulin resistance to storing carbs in muscle

However, there are some positive news. The keto diet:

• Resulted in greater fat loss of 2.9 kg fat mass on average, versus 2.1 Kg for the sugar restricted diet

• Shifted body energy use from sugars to fat

• Achieved fat loss without changing physical activity levels

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Overall, the keto diet is effective for fat loss, but limiting all types of carbs comes with multiple negative health outcomes that may not suit everyone. In contrast, sugar restriction can help with fat loss without apparent negative health impacts.