When Hyun Koo thinks about the future of eating well, he pictures kimchi and sauerkraut on the menu. Koo, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Dental Medicine, has spent years studying the tiny microbes that live in our mouths and guts. Now, he and his team have published research suggesting that fermented plant-based foods like these could become powerful tools for improving human health.
The study, published in Nature Reviews Microbiology, brings together scientists from Penn Dental Medicine, Penn Medicine, Penn Nursing, and Jeonbuk National University in South Korea. Their work explores how foods such as kimchi — a spicy fermented cabbage dish popular in Korean cuisine — and sauerkraut interact with the trillions of bacteria that call our bodies home.
What makes these foods special, according to the researchers, is what they carry inside. Unlike plain vegetables or processed snacks, fermented plant-based foods are packed with three things: living microbial communities, the helpful substances those microbes produce, and fiber along with plant compounds that may boost health. Yogurt and probiotic drinks already use live bacteria to support digestion, but the team notes that solid, plant-based fermented foods work differently and may offer unique advantages.
"Plant-based fermented foods may have an advantage not only in their efficiency in delivering microbes to the host but also by providing unique benefits via bioactive phytochemicals that have been shown to promote human health," said Gary Wu, a professor of gastroenterology at Penn's Perelman School of Medicine who contributed to the research.
The researchers are now proposing a roadmap for developing these foods into what they call "precision nutrition" — meals and snacks specifically designed to support an individual's oral and gut health. To get there, they say scientists need better databases cataloging which microbes live in which foods, more advanced tools to study microbial strains, and new food products made with carefully selected bacterial and chemical profiles.
For now, the team acknowledges that more research is needed. But their vision is hopeful: a world where your next meal of kimchi or pickles might do more than just taste good — it could help keep your mouth and digestive system healthy too.