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What we eat affects not only our
health, but the economy too.
Image: iStockphoto

Could so-called ‘smart foods’ that utilise meat and milk help create value-added opportunities for New Zealand’s dairy and meat industries?

The food we eat is digested by a gut that has an epithelium roughly the size of a tennis court (about 300sq m) and is our most complex interface with the environment.

The gut consists of different cell types, harbors trillions of microbes; more than 10-times the number of human cells in our body, and comprises 60% of the body’s immune system.

What does our gut do for us? It acts as a ‘biological bouncer’, protecting our body from undesirable bacteria and toxins whilst allowing nutrients free passage to support bodily functions.

The trillions of microbes occupying our gut have 100-times the number of genes present in our genome (our genetic make-up) and provide us with functions that humans have either lost or never had.

Each of us has our own microbial community, being as unique to us as our fingerprints.

Our phenotype (the different physical characteristic of our genes) is not determined by us alone, our microbial community also plays an important role in determining that.

The gut is colonised during early life following birth via interaction with our environment (e.g. intimate contact with our mother via breastfeeding) by a microbial community that contributes to digestion of food, secretes molecules that benefit us and stimulates gut function and development.

This colonisation is essential for the development of a healthy, resilient and functional gut for adult life.

It is also in our early life, soon after birth, that the foods we eat might help model the microbial community that will ultimately help shape our adult life.

These are challenging interactions to understand but given that our diet is recognised as a major contributor to the development of many chronic diseases that typically develop in later life, they are clearly very important.

AgResearch Science 2020 has identified strategies to develop future Smart Foods that will use meat and milk as ingredients to help create value-add opportunities for New Zealand’s dairy and meat industries.