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.

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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.

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