Japanese Guts Are Made For Sushi

cremeglace writes "Americans don't have the guts for sushi. At least that's the implication of a new study, which finds that Japanese people harbor enzymes in their intestinal bacteria that help them digest seaweed, enzymes that North Americans lack. What's more, Japanese may have first acquired these enzymes by eating bacteria that thrive on seaweed in the open ocean."

Comments

Am i missing something?

[Daetrin]

I thought that everyone started out with pretty much zero gut bacteria and acquire them based on what they eat. (And sometimes people lose all their gut bacteria from various medical treatments and have to work to restore them.)

So the japanese end up with the bacteria/enzymes do digest sushi because... they eat a lot of sushi. Presumably anyone else could develop a colony of such bacteria/enzymes by also eating a lot of sushi?

That would mean the division isn't whether you're Japanese or American or something else. It's just whether or not you eat a lot of sushi.

Re:Am i missing something?

[Misanthrope]

Some of your gut microflora and fauna comes from your mom during the birthing process, others from breastfeeding and some from what you eat on a regular basis. This is interesting because the genes are transferred supposedly from the bugs living on seaweed to the bugs living in your gut, letting the same species of gut bugs to develop an ability to digest seaweed better.

North Americans?

[Froeschle]

What about North Americans of Japanese decent?

Ammo for Racism

[eheien]

Just what we need, more "Japanese are unique" idiocy to justify racism and discrimination in Japan. So far we've heard that "Japanese intestines are longer, so Japanese can't eat foreign beef", "Japanese brains are unique, so only Japanese people can speak the Japanese language." and so on, all of which are supported by pseudo-scientific studies such as this one.

This sort of incomplete research just feeds the view of racial uniqueness (and superiority) among Japanese and justifies their racism and discrimination against others.

Bowel obstruction

[AlpineR]

Speaking of cold, dead digestive tracts: A few years ago, I got terribly ill while on vacation. Loss of appetite, waves of tremendous abdominal cramps, and vomiting. My intestines had plugged up and it took some intervention to get them moving again.

I put some of the blame on a sushi lunch I ate that day. I'd eaten sushi often before, but this restaurant used a lot more seaweed in the dishes than I was accustomed to. Even as I was eating, I had second thoughts about whether what I was putting into my mouth was actually edible. But I figured it seemed strange to me only because that Japanese restaurant was more authentic than the Americanized sushi places where I usually dined.

Now I wonder whether that seaweed would be edible to Japanese guts, but truly was inedible to mine.

Japanese yogurt cultures

[mattr]

TFA is not clear whether non-Japanese really cannot break down seaweed at all.
In Japan it is popular to buy yogurt with live culture, for example there is Meiji's LB51 (lacto bacillus 51) yogurt supposedly good for your gut.
Might be cool if a yogurt with this organism is made.
Of course if you could just eat non-sterile seaweed maybe it would make a culture for you in your gut.. anybody know about edible seaweeds that would have this?
I've had seaweed salad and maybe that would have it.
Also the American gut is supposedly longer does that balance not having the enzyme at all?

you're missing the implication

[circletimessquare]

if you artificially make the birthing process clean, you are not adequately inoculating your baby's digestive tract with the mother's gut flora

perhaps setting the kid up for opportunistic infection in the first days of life, inadequate digestion, malformed immune system (allergies), etc.

so you reacted to the ugliness of getting shat upon by your mother at birth, but your delicate sensibilities are not the issue: for millions of years, getting shit on at birth has meant we evolved with the timing of the introduction of the full spectrum of the mother's gut bacteria at time of birth. meaning a delay in that timing could be unhealthy for normal immune function, normal digestion function, etc.

we talk about how antiseptic living has increased allergies and other diseases. a clean birthing room might be a part of that constellation of problems. perhaps in the future, healthy child birth will consist of the doctor shoving his finger up the mother's ass and sticking it in the newborn's mouth to ensure full spectrum inoculation. this may sound disgusting to you, but it may be the healthiest thing you can do for a newborn's normal development