Bacteroides plebius – Japanese Sushi Bacteria
The human gut is home to trillions of microorganisms, or bacteria.
The Korean translation is ‘germ’ and we’ve been taught since childhood that germs are something to be eradicated.
But if we didn’t have bacteria in our bodies, antibiotic-resistant superbugs would take over and eventually kill us.
There are many bacteria that protect us.
One of those bacteria is called Bacteroides previus, and the reason it’s nicknamed “Japanese” is because Americans don’t have it in their gut, but Japanese people do, and when you look at it, it produces an enzyme that breaks down algae.
In other words, if you have this bacteria in your body, algae is digested well, and if you don’t have this bacteria, algae is not a nutrient, but just a fiber that helps you defecate.
At first, I thought so, but when I took a closer look at the thousands of data we have accumulated over the past four years, 90% of Koreans have this bacteria.
If we had tested Korean people first, it might have been called ‘Korean seaweed soup bacteria’ instead of ‘Japanese sushi bacteria’.
This bacteria is not found in sterilized nori, even though it is seaweed.
It is said that it enters the human body and settles in the intestines while eating raw seaweed, tat, and green onion, among other sea foods that we have been eating since childhood.
So if you live in a house or in the United States where sterilization of food is important, this bacteria will not have a chance to enter the intestine at an early age.
And if you don’t get it in your gut when you’re young, it’s not going to be there when you eat seaweed later in life.
This leads me to believe that feeding wakame soup to American mothers is likely to have very little or no effect compared to Korean mothers.
Younger Korean mothers and families that insist on overly sterilized food may not have these fungi.
For these people, steak may be a better choice for postpartum food instead of seaweed soup.
Personally, I’ve been bingeing on seaweed soup for the past month to try to grow more of these bacteria, which are the main bacteria in my colon.
[Once you have this bacteria in your gut, even boiled seaweed can grow it].
As a result, the percentage of this bacteria has increased by about 30% from last month.
Maybe this bacteria isn’t the only one doing the same thing, so now I need to get to know the other 2,999 species of gut bacteria I have left.
