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Optimise your Gut Health with Vetta SMART

Wed, 9th Oct 2019

Improving your general health through optimal gut health is about picking the right foods, and Vetta SMART can help!

Optimising Your Gut Health in A Nutshell

There are around 2kg of good bacteria or probiotics living in your body.  If you are like many of us, you may not really know much about probiotics apart from the fact that they are beneficial for your health. To clear up any confusion, probiotics are live microbes, when given to your body in adequate amounts provide health benefits. Your body is like a garden and more than one flower is more beautiful and in the case of your body the more variety of probiotics you have the better.

So, if you are jumping on the band wagon of probiotics in supplement form the type you are taking may or may not be needed or even necessary as each probiotic type has unique health benefits. The best way forward is to seek the advice of a qualified health professional like an Accredited Practising Dietitian to give the knowledge on the type of probiotic you should be seeking for your unique circumstances.

If you are wanting to boost your immunity and improve your general health with probiotics, then food is the best place to start. There are several foods which have probiotics including:

1.     Kombucha

2.     Yogurt

3.     Keifir

4.     Pickled cucumbers

5.     Gouda, mozzarella, cheddar and cottage cheese

6.     Natto

7.     Miso

8.     Sauerkraut

9.     Tempe

Including these foods as part of your daily routine can be a great way to include a range of different probiotics to add to the diversity in your gut. On top of this your body gains additional benefits found in whole foods over supplements such as fibre, vitamins and minerals.

If you are keen on keeping your good bacteria happy and alive you need to feed them. Including plant foods with soluble and resistant starch is key. Both soluble fibre and resistant starch have components which cannot be used by your body but are the food or prebiotics for your good bacteria. Including of variety of plant foods from vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts and seeds is where you will find prebiotics. Like there are different type of probiotics there are different types of prebiotics which feed are needed to feed the different types of good bacteria. If you only eat brown rice and no other plant foods, you will only feed a limited number of your good bacteria the rest will die.

Vetta SMART pastas have both soluble fibre and resistant starch with quality Australian ingredients including Australian durum wheat semolina and oat fibre. Results from the National Nutrition Survey show that most Australian adults and children are not eating enough fibre required for health. Vetta SMART Fibre dinosaur and spaghetti pasta varieties has double the amount of fibre as regular pasta with 6.4g/100g while Vetta SMART protein spiral pasta also boasts a huge 10g of fibre per serve! This helps to keep a variety of your probiotics alive and keeping you healthy. An additional bonus is if you cook and cool the pasta before eating it there is even more resistance starch! Making Vetta SMART pastas perfect for leftovers the next day for lunch or dinner.

Take home message: To improve your general health through optimal gut health think food first. Feed and top up your garden of good bacteria daily for optimal health and immunity as part of your daily routine. It is a nice feeling to know that you are never alone and have a whole community looking after your health.

Article supplied by Ashleigh Feltham, Dietitian

 

Top image source via Health Partners

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