Dubai: UAE residents may be overlooking one of the underlying conditions behind whatever is physically ailing them, feels American Jeff Leach, co-founder of global food chain NKD Pizza.
Without a host of proper natural microbial bacteria in our digestive systems, our health may be degenerating into sickness and disease despite adopting modern scientific medicine, workout routines, and elaborate wellness efforts.
In his push to create a worldwide movement of better eating through three outlets of NKD Pizza in Dubai and more planned throughout the Middle East in 2012, Texan evolutionary nutritionist Leach is on a personal worldwide expedition to document the last uncontaminated microbes on earth.
After trudging through Namibia and Botswana late last year and taking microbial samples from remote bushmen who have not been subjected to westernised diets, Leach is teeing up for the next stage of what he calls the Global Microbial Biodiversity Conversation project, which will take him in the coming months deep into the remote jungles of New Guinea, Central Africa, northern Australia and South America.
Traditional cultures
New microbial findings in traditional cultures free of antibiotics, store-bought food and livestock may be incorporated into the probiotic crust in Leach's pizzas that already contain good bacteria needed for a healthy body and are used in his 300-plus pizza franchises around the world.
Years of nutritional academic research led Leach to create a pizza crust containing 10 seeds and grains fortified with prebiotic fibre and heat resistant probiotics with the aim of restoring the balance of good and bad bacteria in the stomach.
"These assimilated or minimally acculturated groups are our reservoirs of what our guts used to look like. And by collecting… samples from disappearing groups around the world, we can create a databank of ideal composition that can serve as a basis for targeted balance in our modern world," Leach told Gulf News in an exclusive interview.
A global academic lecturer who has presented 80 papers on the evolution of human nutrition, Leach is an ardent subscriber to the belief that processed modern food is damaging the untold microbes on and in our bodies that in pre-industrial times acted as a "forgotten organ" to help fight disease.
"As people have moved to a more westernised diet, the composition of our gut bugs has shifted towards a balance of less-desirable species. This is a topic of significant importance in medical circles the world over," Leach said.
Natural microbes
By re-introducing a proper balance of natural microbes into our bodies, he believes the body can fight disease better and move towards a healthier life.
"Dietary inputs can reinstate balance and improve our resistance to disease. But we need to know what an untainted or non-westernised set of gut bugs looks like," he said.
