It isn’t as neat and tidy to say breastfeeding gives infants (better) microbes for their gut marketplace and formula feeding gives infants (terrible) ones. Studies tend to contradict each other even as formula companies work harder and harder to produce a formula more like human milk, but one thing is clear: the microbes that thrive … Continue reading →

In the land race for niches in our guts, what we eat often determines who wins and who loses, and breast milk seems to have the added value of being both a vehicle for those initial colonizers as well as a nutrient source. We see it as a train that brings in new colonizers who … Continue reading →

Almost simultaneously as the skills of aerobes and anaerobes dictating niches and stratification, the second necessary step of successful colonization occurs as the infant begins pumping nutrient energy into the gut ecosystem. We know what we eat matters for both the adult and infant microbiota, and scientists are working hard at figuring out exactly why. … Continue reading →