Impact of diet on gut microbiota

In recent years, human gut microbiota (GM) has emerged as a potential target to modulate health and disease. GM could be shaped by different factors, being diet one of the major influences. It metabolizes ingested nutrients to produce an extensive range of microbial metabolites that may have an important impact on human physiology. In turn, dietary components modulate the composition and metabolic activity of the GM, causing either positive or negative effects on human health. However, nutrients are rarely consumed independently and research on diet–microbiota relationship has progressively moved from the study of individual dietary components toward overall dietary patterns. This review summarized recent advances on the influence of food components and dietary patterns on GM and their subjacent impact on human health.