Browsing by Author "Vauhkonen, Johanna Birgitta"

The gut microbiota is important for human health, participating in many important functions, such as digestion, and is strongly modulated by the diet. The consumption of red and processed meat should be reduced due to both health and environmental reasons. Red meat could be partially replaced with legumes, as they are rich in protein. In addition, legumes are a good source of fibre and increasing their consumption would increase fibre intake. Here we aimed to study the effects of a partial replacement of red and processed meat with legumes on the gut microbiota composition in Finnish healthy men. The study was a 6-week randomized clinical trial in parallel design and included two groups with diet supplemented either with red and processed meat (760 g/wk) or a lower amount of red and processed meat (200 g/wk) and legume products containing the corresponding amount protein as in 560 grams of red and processed meat. Both diets provided 25% of the participants’ daily protein intake. The microbiota composition was analysed before and at the end of the intervention period from faecal samples. In total 102 participants finished the study. The group with the diet containing legume products showed a significant reduction in alpha diversity (p=0.029) and in the relative abundance of the genus Prevotella (false discovery rate (FDR)-corrected p-value (p-FDR) =0.130) and Ruminococcaceae NK4A214 group (p-FDR=0.130) when comparing before and after the intervention period. No significant changes were seen in the meat-based diet group. When comparing the two diet groups at the end of the intervention period we observed a significantly higher relative abundance of the genus Agathobacter (p-FDR=0.023), Coprococcus ( p-FDR=0.154) and Ruminiclostridium (p-FDR=0.154) in the meat-based diet group, while the genus Bacteroides (p-FDR=0.112) and Ruminococcaceae UCG.013 group (pFDR=0.066) showed higher relative abundance in the legume-based diet group. In conclusion, our results show that even a partial replacement of red and processed meat affects the composition of the gut microbiota.