Inside the World’s Healthiest Gut: Hadza Microbiome Lessons

The phrase “the world’s healthiest gut” makes a strong headline. It is memorable, clickable, and easy to understand. But the science behind the Hadza microbiome is more careful than that.

Researchers have not proved that the Hadza have the healthiest gut in the world. What they have shown is still remarkable: Hadza gut microbiomes studied in northern Tanzania are more diverse than some industrialized comparison groups, change with the seasons, and include microbial lineages that are rare or missing in many industrialized populations.

That makes the Hadza important to modern health research. Their gut bacteria do not offer a simple cure for obesity, diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, or heart disease. But they do challenge one of the quiet assumptions of industrial life: that the modern gut is normal.

Who Are the Hadza?

The Hadza are an Indigenous people of northern Tanzania, especially associated with the Lake Eyasi region. In Demography and Evolutionary Ecology of Hadza Hunter-Gatherers, Nicholas Blurton Jones describes Hadza life around the “rocky hills in the eastern rift valley near Lake Eyasi” (Blurton Jones, 2016, p. 3).

For generations, many Hadza families have relied on hunting wild animals and gathering plant foods. Blurton Jones writes that most Hadza in his research period acquired the bulk of their food by “hunting wild animals and gathering wild plants” (Blurton Jones, 2016, p. 4).

This matters because the Hadza microbiome cannot be separated from Hadza food systems, movement, land, and seasonal ecology. The gut is not only a medical organ. It is also an ecological record.

Further Reading

Nicholas Blurton Jones (2016)

Demography and Evolutionary Ecology of Hadza Hunter-Gatherers