With spring welcoming us into the warmer months, why not use this time to embrace a gut-health reset? Here are three simple ways to get started.
1. Add more fibre to your diet
You might be surprised by just how much better you feel after upping your daily intake of fibre. Supporting the transit of food through the digestive tract, dietary fibre is a positive contributor to cardiovascular health, with research showing it can help reduce the risk of heart disease, type-2 diabetes and bowel cancer.
There are plenty of delicious ways you can add more high-fibre foods to your diet, including:
- Wholegrains
- Beans
- Lentils
- Vegetables
- Nuts
- Seeds
- Dried fruit
In terms of recommended daily intake, women should look to eat 25g of fibre, whereas men need 30g. This can be easily achieved with a balanced diet that includes:
- 4 serves of wholegrain or wholemeal foods
- 2 serves of fruit
- 5 serves of vegetables, including legumes
2. Incorporate more probiotic- and postbiotic-rich foods
Another way to reset your gut health is by introducing more probiotics and postbiotics into your diet. Probiotics have a beneficial effect by supporting a healthy gut microbiome – you can read more about why you need probiotics here – while postbiotics are naturally occurring bioactive compounds that appear after probiotic bacteria, and there is a strong symbiotic relationship between postbiotics and maintaining your gut health.
If you aren’t sure where to start when it comes to incorporating probiotic- and postbiotic-rich foods into your daily intake, here are some suggestions:
Probiotics
- Yogurt – made from milk fermented by probiotics.
- Kefir – a fermented milk drink containing several major strains of friendly bacteria and yeast.
- Sauerkraut
- Tempeh
- Kimchi
- Miso
Postbiotics
- Cottage cheese
- Fermented pickles
- Buttermilk
- Kombucha
- Tempeh
If you’d prefer a quick, easy and tasty option to boost your gut health with probiotics, you can enjoy Meluka’s range of Raw Honey Probiotic Concentrates – carefully designed to support your gut health and immune system with six multi-strain probiotics and six billion colony-forming units (CFUs) in every 15mL serve. It’s available in a number of delicious flavours: Original, Lemon, Tea Tree, Davidson Plum, Finger Lime, Lemon Myrtle and Collagen (which includes a daily collagen booster of 3,000mg per serve).
Postbiotics are just as important as they are the beneficial metabolites that promote better gut health. So, to set you off on the right foot during your spring gut-health reset, Meluka’s P3 Gut Builder is the perfect option. It’s a triple-action tonic that contains not just prebiotics, but probiotics and postbiotics as well – combined to improve gut microbial diversity. Made with our unique Lactobacillus rhamnosus Beebiotic MAP01™ probiotic strain, it’s teeming with beneficial metabolites that are ready to support your gut’s digestive health and overall wellbeing.
3. Embrace the gut-health benefits of prebiotics
If you are unfamiliar with prebiotics, they are a type of fibre that cannot be digested and instead help to cultivate a healthy microbiome by supporting gut bacteria to flourish. The gut bacteria breaks down these fibres through fermentation, producing short-chain fatty acids that supply energy to colon-lining cells.
Some of the best foods to eat for prebiotics include:
- Raw honey – a natural prebiotic.
- Chicory root – approximately 68% of chicory root fibre comes from inulin, the prebiotic fibre that can improve digestion, bowel function and help relieve constipation.
- Dandelion greens – contains 1.92g of fibre per 1 cup, with a high proportion coming from inulin.
- Jerusalem artichoke – provides about 2g of inulin-rich dietary fibre per 100g.
- Onions, garlic and leeks – these vegetables promote the growth of beneficial Bifidobacteria in the gut.
- Asparagus – naturally contains inulin.
- Bananas – contain small amounts of inulin.
- Barley – contains between 2–20g of beta-glucan (a prebiotic fibre) per 100g.
- Oats – a healthy grain that contains large amounts of beta-glucan fibre.
You can purchase our P3 Gut Builder, Raw Honey Probiotic Concentrates and range of Organic Raw Honey to boost your gut health for spring, summer and beyond!
Explore the wide range of Meluka products at our online store, get healthy ideas at our blog, and find tasty recipes for ongoing health and wellness.