Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

.j.p. That's y-A-K-U-L-T.c-O.jp. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

This is Scientific American's 60-second science. I'm Christopher Entagata. Got a minute?

You are what you eat, the old expression goes, but it leaves out one crucial detail.

We don't dine alone. We dine with trillions of friends.

Jeff Gordon, a microbiologist at Washington University in St. Louis.

And they are partners in consuming these meals and processing these ingredients.

Those friends, they're microbes in our guts.

They break down dinner, including otherwise indigestible stuff,

and pass the leftovers on to more microbes,

creating a complex food web inside us. But that microbial garden is a lot

more diverse in people who eat a calorie-restricted veggie-rich diet. The typical American diet, on the

other hand, breads, meat, cheese, not a lot of veggies, it doesn't raise up near as diverse a crop of microbes. And microbial

diversity matters because in a mouse model, Gordon's team found that if you give up the American

diet in favor of a healthier one with lots of veggies, the Americanized gut bacteria, being less

diverse, aren't primed to respond. They're not great at regrouping to accommodate all the nutrients

and kale and broccoli and so on. The studies in the journal cell host and microbe. Now all this isn't to say

you shouldn't try to eat healthier because it's not clear how this microbial efficiency

translates into human health. Or to what extent you might be able to pick up beneficial microbes

...