Wine And Coffee Are Good For Your Gut, Study Shows

Next time you indulge in a glass of wine after work, you may be helping the diversity of bacteria in your gut.

A new study published in Science examined factors that contribute to the diversity of people’s microbial community. After analyzing stool samples of 1,135 Dutch people enrolled in the Lifelines-DEEP study, it found that wine, coffee, tea and yogurt, among other factors, contributed positively to the microbial diversity in the gut.

Sugary sodas and smoking during pregnancy, on the other hand, decreased diversity.

“To our knowledge, this is the first study to systematically assess such a broad range of host and environmental factors in relation to gut microbiome and at such a large scale,” Jingyuan Fu, an associate professor at the University of Groningen and one of the authors of the study, told the LA Times.

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Write to Tessa Berenson at tessa.berenson@time.com.