Cooking shapes the structure and function of the gut microbiome

Abstract

Diet is a critical determinant of variation in gut microbial structure and function, outweighing even host genetics. Numerous microbiome studies have compared diets with divergent ingredients, but the everyday practice of cooking remains unclear. Here, we show that a plant diet served raw versus cooked reshapes the murine gut microbiome, with effects attributable to improvements in starch digestibility and degradation of plant-derived compounds. Shifts in the gut microbiota modulated host energy status, applied across multiple starch-rich plants, and were detectable in humans. Thus, diet-driven host-microbial interactions depend on the food as well as its form. Since cooking is human-specific, ubiquitous and ancient, our results prompt the hypothesis that humans and our microbiomes co-evolved under unique cooking-related pressures.