Food ingredients in human health: Ecological and metabolic perspectives implicating gut microbiota function

Background: Dietary imbalance and harmful food substances are well established risk factors that can adversely impact human health. The gut microbiome is emerging as a new metabolic organ that can be serendipitously linked to these poor dietary outcomes. Modern manufactured foods and process ingredients can significantly alter gut microbiome composition and function, leading investigators to conclude that disruption of host-microbiome commensalism is a key mechanism in human disease linked to imbalanced diets or processed foods. Scope and approach: In this review, we highlight disease-associated perturbations and precision manipulation of the human gut microbiome in the context of food and nutrition. We detail technical recommendations for evaluating food ingredient effects on gut microbiome composition and function, following Koch's principles of commensal postulates to evaluate whether reported findings can be implicated in disease causation. Strategies for minimizing and/or reversing diet/food ingredient-induced gut dysbiosis linked with human disease are also considered. Key Findings and Conclusions: Current findings should encourage us to reevaluate the potential health hazards of modern food ingredients and processed foods by considering the involvement of the gut microbiome through well-established pipelines for deciphering the causality of a perturbated gut microbiome in disease induction.