How processed food causes IBD

Processed food messes with your immune system, increases the risk of infection and causes inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

This litany of health problems is the result of eating sugary foods and their impact on a special group of immune cells in the gut that keep inflammation at bay.  When Paneth cells aren’t functioning properly, people are more prone to inflammatory bowel problems.

Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine saw the changes happen speedily when they fed laboratory mice a sugary diet.  Within two months the mice became obese, and their Paneth cells started to look abnormal, although they started functioning properly soon after a healthy diet was reintroduced—but it may not be such a quick get-out-of-jail card for people.  “Obesity doesn’t occur overnight or even in eight weeks. People have a sub-optimal lifestyle for 20 or 30 years before they become obese.  It’s possible that if you have a processed diet for so long you cross a point of no return and your Paneth cells don’t recover even if you change your diet,” said researcher Ta-Chiang Liu.

Processed food includes sugars and trans-fats and the researchers aren’t yet sure which is causing more of the damage, and that’s their next project.

(Source: Cell Host & Microbe, 2021; doi: 10.1016/j.chom.2021.04.004)

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