Hello and welcome back to the Nutrition Diva's quick and dirty tips for eating well and feeling fabulous.

I'm your host, Monica Reinagel.

Nutrition Diva listener Vicky asked me to do a show on soil-based organisms.

These are beneficial bugs that some people believe to be even more helpful than the

friendly bacteria that you'll find in probiotic foods like

yogurt and I've got that show coming right up. And now on to today's show on soil-based organisms.

There's really been an explosion of research lately into the human gut

and the trillions of bugs that call it home.

Scientists are finding links between the bacteria that live in our bodies,

which are sometimes referred to as the microbiome,

and everything from obesity to diabetes to allergies to autism.

But the research is just getting started.

A lot of the current work is simply an attempt to take a census of who's in there and there are a lot of bugs to

catalog. Figuring out exactly what all these bugs are actually doing for or us, and how we might manipulate these populations to our benefit

is still a considerable ways off.

Meanwhile, consumers have cottons to probiotics in a big way.

Although consumption of dairy products has really declined,

consumption of yogurt is way up.

And similarly, although sales of vitamin supplements are down, probiotic supplements are up.

And everyone in their brother is now fermenting their own vegetables.

The interest in soil-based organisms seems to be part of this trend as well.

As the name implies, soil-based organisms are bacteria and other life forms that live in the

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