And this indeed was happening in the emerging partnerships we witnessed in the first two days of touring.The enthusiasm and support from the 1st International Symposium in France in early 2004 carried into the 2005 Symposium in Portugal and drew 160 participants from throughout Europe, as well as Australia, the Cape Verde Islands, Togo, Japan, India, Cameroon, Canada, and the U.S. American attendees included Scott Chaskey from Quail Hill Farm, Elizabeth Henderson from Peacework CSA, Ruth Katz and Paula Lukats from Just Food, Kristy Apostolides , John Peterson from Angelic Organics CSA, Tom Broz from Live Earth Farm CSA, along with the authors and our one-year-old son, Lucas. Kenoli Oleari and Marc Tognotti, also from the U.S., facilitated the participatory meeting framework. The symposium took place in an old smoky theatre along one of Palmela’s cobblestone streets, opening on the morning of December 5th with words from local government officials. There was an overview of the history of the International CSA Network and a review of the new Portuguese Reciproco system. It was exciting to hear that since the idea was taken up in Southern France just four years ago there are now over 200 such AMAP farms throughout France, with enthusiasm for the model growing in other countries around the world. Elizabeth Henderson gave the opening presentation and emphasized the ability of CSA to engage the community in meaningful involvement in the long-term health of the farm,vertical vegetable tower citing the example of her own farm and its shareholders, who have donated money towards the farm’s permanent protection.
Bruno Jean-Jean from France spoke about extending the philosophy of CSA to other enterprises, such as ecologically/locally produced home and body cleaning soaps. Helene Knoll from France and Angel Hernandez spoke of the role primary education can play in fostering relationships between rural and urban communities.To elicit a broad range of ideas for the network from as many perspectives as possible, each of the planned small group workshops included time for reflection on how the particular area of focus addressed by that workshop could have a role in the International Network. For example, in the workshop on Long Term Viability for CSAs, there surfaced the idea of posting example budgets from various CSAs around the world on the Urgenci web site , which had been serving as the Network’s web site from the beginning. In the land tenure workshop, there was discussion of how land preservation tools from each country could be summarized and posted on the web site, coupled with a new global bank offering loans to locally specific farmland preservation efforts. Already since the meeting, we’ve joined a French land preservation effort whereby they pooled capital from over a thousand “associates” to purchase and protect a small piece of an important agricultural region outside of Paris to operate their CSA/AMAP project. And in fact, we may now begin employing that same model in an effort to acquire and permanently protect the historic Steele Ranch on the California coast for use as an educational farm . Other workshops examined starting, diversifying, and ensuring the long-term viability of CSA projects; mobilizing and organizing consumers in support of small-scale farmers; and ensuring access to quality food for low-income people .
The discussions and networking during the workshops and during breaks over coffee, local ham and cheese sandwiches, and zesty, fresh orange juice, culminated in the final day of the symposium, with the morning focused on round table discussions about citizen engagement and public policy initiatives and the afternoon dedicated to the formalization of the International CSA Network. Seven representatives from Japan, Africa, the U.K., France, Greece, and the U.S. stepped forward to work with Samuel Thirion from Urgenci to help realize some of the goals expressed by everyone during the meetings. The committee divided tasks, such as planning the next symposium, coordinating resources for the network, and improving the web site. Dennis Wake, manager of UCSC’s College 8 Dining Hall, enthusiastically supports the new purchasing program. “I believe all of the campus chefs feel fortunate that we are able to access such fine local product. This has been a long time due and I see the program setting the trend across the land,” says Wake. He’s also pleased with the impact that local, organic produce has had on choices for both chefs and students. “With the variety of seasonal product available our menu can reflect different ‘specials of the day’. This not only keeps the chefs stimulated but the students as well,” says Wake, adding, “The area in which we live is so rich with various fresh produce and seafood, it is a chef’s dream. To have a program developing such as this can only enhance the experience of everybody involved.” Wake notes that the more students are educated and aware of the program, the better the reaction. Candy Berlin, program coordinator for UCSC Dining, has done an outstanding job providing educational and outreach materials in the dining halls that inform students about the origin of their food, the importance of sustainable food choices, and what it means to eat locally and seasonally. “
Students are reacting to these new changes in their food because they see the vibrant colors of fresh and local produce,” Berlin says, “And it’s a huge change to hear the chefs talk about their menu planning around purple cabbage as opposed to creating a menu and then looking for the ingredients.” Dwight Collins, Executive Chef of Dining Services, echoes Berlin’s and Wake’s enthusiasm. “The chefs are very excited about the involvement of local, organic growers—a lot of the chefs have been into organics and vegetarianism for a long time,” says Collins. He sees a significant impact on meal planning thanks to the availability of fresh produce. “We’re seeing a lot of different vegetables now since we’re going more with what’s in season rather than using frozen vegetables. This is great for the students to try new things—we’re making sure there’s signage with the food, especially with vegetables they’ve never seen before, like romanesco broccoli which looks like something out of ‘Alien’.” Citing examples of how the program has changed menu planning, Collins notes, “Since we can get organic onions, and organic sub ingredients, we’re able to make an all organic marinara sauce. And we have access now to more organic dry beans and have been making organic chili. We never thought of trying this before because these ingredients weren’t available.” Collins adds that the younger audiences who visit UCSC will also experience the option of fresh, organic food. “A lot of the groups that come for summer sessions will benefit from seeing what’s available in the dining halls. Youth groups will become more aware and educated. The cheerleader groups that come love pizza and chicken nuggets and will benefit from learning about the benefits of eating fresh and organic produce.”We live in an intimate relationship with microorganisms that are present on the surfaces and cavities of the human body. During birth, or shortly thereafter, microbes from the mother’s skin and milk, the air, and inanimate objects enter the virtually germ-free system of the neonate and proliferate to a dramatic extent. Bacterial cells are most abundant, but other types of microbes are also present in the GI tract, such as archaea, viruses, protozoa, and fungi. The intestinal lumen alone harbors 10 times more bacterial cells than eukaryotic cells in the entire human body, an amount equivalent to approximately 1 kg of human mass.This fact leads us to view ourselves as “superorganisms”, being composed of our cells as well as microbial cells that are dependent on each another for survival.Food is a major source of energy that promotes growth and development, immunity,vertical farm tower and tissue repair, as well as homeostatic regulation. It is also an important energy source for gut microbiota.Although most nutrient absorption occurs in the small intestine, the colon harbors the majority of bacterial colonists. The colon can be viewed as the major site for “co-metabolic” activity, which enhances the efficiency of the energy harvest from foods and influences the synthesis, bio-availability, and function of nutrients,vitamins,and drugs. Thus, the functional interaction between microbes and their host explains individual variability of nutrient metabolism and bio-availability.Understanding the relationship between the gut microbiome and diet is important for the development of next-generation therapeutic foods that target these microbes in health-promoting ways and will ultimately usher us toward an era of personalized nutrition and medicine. In this paper, current knowledge of the gut microbiome from the perspective of human dietary history and the coevolutionary relationship with the host will be broadly reviewed. The impact of major dietary components as well as single food ingredients that favor changes in the gut microbiome will be explored.
Dietary transition during human history has been suggested to play a central role in the evolution of mankind.Unlike the diets of other higher primates, which consist of mainly fiber-rich plants supplemented with insects and a small amount of animal flesh,humans consume easily digested, energy-dense food. This distinction has resulted in substantial differences in the human GI tract including a smaller gut volume, longer small intestine, smaller cecum and colon, and faster gut passage rate.The discovery of fire and use of cooking techniques are also contributed to the evolution of human GI physiology by softening food texture, elevating calorie density, and reducing toxins.These differences are encompassed within the “expensive tissue hypothesis”,which suggests that a reduction in the of size of an energetically expensive GI tract yields a corresponding increase in the size of an energetically expensive brain, which in humans may have been facilitated by improvements in diet .Another major advancement in human evolution was the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture involving the domestication of animals and crops. Domesticated plants provided more calories than non-domesticated plants, which consequently drove the dietary pattern to focus more on a limited variety of foods, with a reduction in nutrient diversity.Today, economics, agriculture, and culture are strong forces that shape food availability, variety, and quality. With the advent and spread of global food production, additional changes in the human diet have occurred. Mass food production has allowed people to focus more intensively on the consumption of a few staples. The acquisition of a conserved and stable microbial consortium is constrained by the host GI tract morphology and long-term diet history.A recent study examined the gut microbiome of 39 different mammalian species , grouping them into herbivores , carnivores, and omnivores.Comparisons between the groups revealed only three bacterial genera are significantly associated with the overall mammalian phylogenetic tree, namely Prevotella, Barnesiella, and Bacteroides. Although there were differences in the anatomy and function of the gut in each group, as well as a varied rate of microbial fermentation among the hosts,herbivores appeared to be enriched in functional enzymes essential to the biosynthesis of amino acids, whereas carnivores were enriched in enzymes involved with branched-chain amino acid degradation.Herbivores also harbored a more diverse microbial community than carnivores.Notably, a gut microbiome that is low in diversity is less resilient to various disturbances from diet.These results support the notion that, over time, the intestinal microbial community has coevolved with the host.Part of the coevolution of the gut microbiota with its host involves horizontal gene transfer to gain function and adapt to new environmental conditions. For example, the acquisition of carbohydrate-active enzymes , both glycoside hydrolases and glycosyltransferases, in human gut microbiota is largely due to horizontal gene transfer rather than functional gene expansion.Indeed, the human genome lacks the large repertoire of glycoside hydrolases and polysaccharide lyases to digest a wide variety of plant material, whereas the distal gut microbiome provides diverse CAZymes that cleave the many glycosidic linkages present in complex dietary polysaccharides . More recently, a comparative genomic analysis demonstrated the high prevalence of horizontal gene transfer in the human gut microbiome.Therefore, horizontal gene transfer contributes to the complexity of the metabolic function of the gut microbiome, allowing the host and its resident microbiota to adapt to changing environmental conditions. Thus, the ability of a host to acclimatize to environmental shifts is dictated by the co-metabolic capabilities of both the gut microbes and the host. For instance, in Japanese communities where nonsterile, uncooked seaweed is regularly consumed, the genome of the human gut symbiont Bacteroides plebeius has retained β-porphyranase, a beneficial enzyme capable of digesting algal cell walls from Zobellia galactanivorans. Indeed, low microbial complexity has been associated with a Western diet and sedentary lifestyle and potentially could contribute to disorders associated with excessive weight gain.