The gut bugs made me do it

[ksmith]

A small study has linked the bugs residing in one's gut with a desire, or lack of desire, for chocolate.

Still to be determined is if the bacteria cause the craving, or if early in life people's diets changed the bacteria, which then reinforced food choices.

If I can blame gut bugs for my yen for warm, crusty bread, I'll have it made.

In other news, this is the type of article I was thinking of when I asked about research like the lactose study cited in this post. It was all an offshoot of some things I pondered as I wrote the Jani books, that living on a new world, even a terraformed world, would start to alter you on a genetic/gut bug level and that gradually, over a very long period of time, those changes would alter you. Yes, it was a handwavy justification for hybridization, albeit at a glacial pace, and with a bucketload of assumptions.

Comments

[torrilin.livejournal.com]

Mmm... not sure it's handwavy at all. Our bodies are pretty complicated. It makes sense that if we can have diseases show up when the internal balance of bacteria changes (that being the main factor in yeast infections and ulcers), that the same balance can affect other ways our body works.

Absence of evidence is not proof of absence.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was a handwavy justification for hybridization, albeit at a glacial pace, and with a bucketload of assumptions.

I have an irradiated mineral-leeching microbe that set up a lost civilization.

What? ME criticize?

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

We were formed by our environment. Change our environment, and that which doesn't kill us...

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Not you. ;-)

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

But... but... why would you want to change a yen for warm, crusty bread?

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

All those warm, crusty calories. Especially since I discovered that really good Danish butter.