Food as Medicine Provenza “We benefit from this soil food web as phytonutrients are Anti-microbial, anti-parasitic, anti-inflammatory, anti-carcinogenic, cardioprotective, and immunomodulatory—phytochemicals bolster health and protect livestock and humans against diseases and pathogens.”

As farmers and ranchers, we’ve been tasked with  to supply safe food, fiber and fuel to our communities.

“People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.”

Hayne (1940) stated that, “if we feed the soil, it will feed us,” and that “only productive soil can support a prosperous people.”

Kong and colleagues examined the gut microbiome of a cohort of
healthy, long-living Chinese individuals including nonagenarians (90-99
years old) and centenarians (≥100 years old) in Dujiangyan, Sichuan,
China. They found that this cohort of long-living people possesses a
more diverse gut microbiota than younger adults, contradictory to
conventional views. They also found that a group of bacteria, members of
which are known short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) producers such as Clostridium cluster XIVa, are enriched in the long-living Chinese [5].

To
verify their discovery, they analyzed an independent data set from a
cohort of an Italian group. Consistently, the long-living Italians also
had more diverse gut microbiotas than the younger group. When they
combined the Italian and the Chinese data sets, they found that although
the gut microbiota structures are significantly different, probably due
to the differences in diet, genetics and environment, 11 of the top 50
bacterial features that differentiate the long-living individuals from
the younger group were shared. Again, these features included the
greater microbiome diversity and several enriched OTUs (operational
taxonomic units) related to SCFA production [5].
In a follow-up study, Kong and colleagues showed that the greater gut
microbiome diversity in the long-living people was also observed in two
more independent cohorts: one from Jiangsu, China and the other from
Japan [6].

These
studies clearly revealed that more diverse and balanced gut microbiotas
are present in healthy, long-living people, whereas disturbed gut
microbiotas with dysbiosis are observed in the elderly who suffer from
different comorbidities.(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6366966/)