Follow a Mediterranean-style eating pattern

Center your diet around vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, olive oil, and fish. Limit red meat, refined grains, and added sugars. This is not a rigid diet but a flexible eating pattern.

Why It Works

The Mediterranean diet has the strongest evidence base of any dietary pattern for gut health. It is consistently associated with increased microbial diversity, higher SCFA production, and reduced systemic inflammation across multiple large cohort studies and intervention trials. It naturally provides high fiber, diverse polyphenols, omega-3 fatty acids, and plant diversity.

Tips

• This pattern naturally achieves the 30+ plants per week target without deliberate counting
• Olive oil itself has prebiotic-like effects, promoting beneficial Lactobacillus growth
• It is not an all-or-nothing approach — any shift toward this pattern yields measurable benefits
• Also the best-evidenced dietary pattern for cardiovascular and metabolic health