The additives added to processed food to keep it fresher for longer might be having an unexpected effect on the health of the microbes in our guts.

Inside all of us there’s a bustling community of trillions of cells that influences numerous aspects of our health. We call it our “microbiome”.

“You can think of gut diversity as like a forest. The more microbes that you have and the different types of microbes in your forest, the greater resilience you have to any perturbations,” says Melissa Lane, a nutritional epidemiologist at Deakin University.

Science long ago confirmed that a healthy and diverse microbiome is key for our overall wellbeing, as it influences everything from our mood to our metabolism and even our brains.

Those who have lower bacterial diversity in their gut are more prone to sleep problems, poorer gut health and greater inflammation, whilst a high diversity is even linked to a longer life.

“It’s this whole ecosystem. It’s like an extra organ that we have in our body,” explains Sarah Berry, a professor of nutrition from Kings College London.

But some of the foods we commonly eat could be harming this ecosystem, evidence suggests. Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) in particular can disrupt and alter the microbes in our gut.

And one of the reasons is increasingly being attributed to the numerous additives in our food. It made me wonder what these additives do to our gut.