Introduction

Advice on what to eat and which diet is best for you is relentless and often contradictory. It varies from what you should eat, when you should eat, why you should eat this over that, how much you should eat, and how you should look and feel, depending on whichever diet is being promoted. Each diet has its advocates and its passionate following. You only have to look through social media to see the one-eyed followings that diets such as paleo, carnivore, low carb and intermittent fasting have accumulated. However, beneath all the ‘noise’ there is a reasonable consensus on a handful of principles that support good health. The trick is to hold those principles lightly alongside the knowledge that you are not a generic adult: you have a history, a biology, a set of values, and a life that shapes what eating well can realistically look like for you.

The Microbiome

There is now a lot of information about the microbiome, and it can feel overwhelming. At its simplest, the microbiome is the vast community of microorganisms: bacteria, fungi, and other microscopic life that live in your digestive system and play a quiet but significant role in your health, from digestion and immunity to mood and energy.

No two microbiomes are identical. Yours has been shaped by how you were born, whether you were breastfed, the illnesses you have had, the medications you have taken, where you have lived, what you have eaten over a lifetime, and the amount of stress your body has carried. In this sense, it is a biological autobiography.

Think of it like a rainforest. A rainforest is a lush, layered, and densely populated ecosystem. It depends on canopy trees that provide shelter and shade, an understorey of plants that thrive in filtered light, a forest floor rich in fungi and decomposers that break down material and return nutrients to the soil, and the steady warmth and moisture that hold the whole system together. Remove a layer, flood it with something it was not built to process, or repeatedly clear it back, and the ecosystem loses its complexity and resilience.

Our microbiome works in a similar way. It supports the body’s functions best when it is diverse, and that diversity comes largely from what we eat. This is why food matters beyond calories and macronutrients. It is information for a living system.

The Template

A template is a starting point. It provides a framework or guide you can adjust as needed to suit you. It is similar to buying a dress online that you like and then taking it to a dressmaker to adjust the length or width so it actually works for you. Dietary guidelines work the same way. The broad recommendations exist for good reason and are worth knowing. But they were written for a population, not for you specifically. Your history, health, values, relationship with food, and the reality of your daily life all determine how that template is fitted, adjusted, and made to work.

Most dietary frameworks, however different they may look on the surface, share common ground: more plants, less processed food, variety, and moderation. What varies is the emphasis, and often the values behind it. A vegetarian may avoid meat for reasons that are ethical as much as health-related. Someone eating low-carb may be managing blood sugar. Someone eating paleo may simply be responding to how certain foods make them feel. None of this is wrong. Food is rarely morally neutral, and values and lived experience legitimately shape what we choose to eat. The aim here is not to add to the noise but to offer a few anchors that most of the evidence agrees on, and then invite you to trial what works for your particular body and life. Shame and rigidity, it turns out, are rarely good ingredients for sustainable change.

Your gut has a language

There is another reason food matters beyond nutrition, and it has to do with how your gut and your brain ‘talk’ to each other.

Your gut has its own nervous system, sometimes called the enteric nervous system, containing around 100 million neurons: the same type of cells found in the brain. These are connected to the brain via the vagus nerve, and the conversation runs in both directions. The brain ‘talks’ to the gut and the gut ‘talks’ to the brain. In fact, the majority of signals travel from gut to brain, not the other way around. This is why what you eat can affect your mood, your stress response, and your sense of wellbeing, and why anxiety so reliably shows up in the stomach.

This conversation often goes unnoticed until something feels wrong. A knot of tension before a difficult meeting. Nausea when something feels off. Discomfort after a meal that did not suit you. Your gut is not malfunctioning; it is communicating.

When that happens, rather than layering shame or self-criticism on top of an already uncomfortable experience, it helps to simply notice that it did not work well for me. Then consider what else was going on besides what you were eating. There is no drama. No need to spiral downwards. Reset and see how you feel tomorrow. 

This is a strength-based approach to eating. The aim is for you to grow your awareness of what your particular system responds well to, and a willingness to adjust with curiosity rather than judgment.

What is on the template?

If there is one thing most dietary frameworks agree on, it is this: eat more plants. The details vary, but the direction remains the same.

It is worth pausing to consider the Mediterranean diet, because it is one of the most researched dietary patterns in the world and is consistently associated with better health outcomes across multiple measures. Yes, it emphasises vegetables, legumes, wholegrains, olive oil, and fish. But researchers increasingly note that what surrounds the food matters too: village life, daily walking, the sun, and unhurried meals eaten with other people. Food does not exist in isolation from the life in which it is eaten. That is worth remembering.

With that in mind, here are the anchors most of the evidence agrees on:

Eat more plants. Vegetables, fruit, legumes, and wholegrains in variety and abundance. This is the single most consistent finding across almost every dietary framework and underpins almost everything else on this list.

Eat more fibre. Most Australians fall well short of the recommended intake. Fibre feeds the gut microbiome, supports bowel regularity, helps regulate blood sugar and cholesterol, and is consistently linked to better overall metabolic health. Good sources include vegetables, legumes, wholegrains, and fruit. If you are increasing fibre, do so gradually and drink more water.¹

Include fermented foods. Yoghurt, kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut, miso, and tempeh introduce beneficial microorganisms and metabolites to the gut. Evidence has strengthened considerably in recent years, with research suggesting both short and long-term benefits for gut diversity and immune function. ²˒³

Go easy on ultra-processed foods. This is probably the most important shift most people can make. Ultra-processed foods are industrially manufactured products containing ingredients not typically found in home cooking: emulsifiers, artificial flavours, stabilisers, and added sugars. The evidence linking high consumption to cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and all-cause mortality has grown substantially and is now difficult to ignore. The point is not perfection; it is awareness. A quiet note on alcohol belongs here too: it sits in a similar category for sleep, mood, and gut health, and most of us already know this.⁴˒⁵

Go easy on processed red meat. The evidence here is more nuanced than headlines suggest. Unprocessed red meat in moderate amounts carries relatively modest risk. Processed red meat, like bacon, salami, sausages, and deli meats, show stronger and more consistent associations with cardiovascular disease and cancer risk. The distinction matters and is worth knowing. ⁶

Final Thought

There is no perfect diet. There is only one that works for you, in the life you are actually living. The evidence gives you a framework. Your body, your history, and your gut, literally, give you feedback. When you can hold both of those together with curiosity rather than judgment, you have everything you need to find your own way through the noise.

References

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2. Leeuwendaal NK, Stanton C, O’Toole PW, Beresford TP. Fermented foods, health and the gut microbiome. Nutrients. 2022;14(7):1527. doi:10.3390/nu14071527
3. Park I, Mannaa M. Fermented foods as functional systems: microbial communities and metabolites influencing gut health and systemic outcomes. Foods. 2025;14(13):2292. doi:10.3390/foods14132292
4. Barbaresko J, Bröder J, Conrad J, Szczerba E, Lang A, Schlesinger S. Ultra-processed food consumption and human health: an umbrella review of systematic reviews with meta-analyses. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2025;65(11):1999-2007. doi:10.1080/10408398.2024.2317877
5. Vitale M, Costabile G, Testa R, D’Abbronzo G, Nettore IC, Macchia PE, et al. Ultra-processed foods and human health: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies. Adv Nutr. 2024;15(1):100121. doi:10.1016/j.advnut.2023.09.009
6. Shi W, Huang X, Schooling CM, Zhao JV. Red and processed meat and cardiovascular mortality: meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies. Eur Heart J. 2023;44(28):2626-35. doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehad336
7. Schneider KM, Blank N, Thaiss CA. From mental strain to gut pain: a brain-gut pathway transducing psychological stress to intestinal inflammation. Clin Transl Med. 2023;13(10):e1458. doi:10.1002/ctm2.1458
8. Hwang YK, Oh JS. Interaction of the vagus nerve and serotonin in the gut-brain axis. Int J Mol Sci. 2025;26(3):1160. doi:10.3390/ijms26031160
9. Bear T, Dalziel J, Coad J, Roy N, Butts C, Gopal P. The microbiome-gut-brain axis and resilience to developing anxiety or depression under stress. Microorganisms. 2021;9(4):723. doi:10.3390/microorganisms9040723

Katrina Gow is a counsellor and psychotherapist in private practice in Melbourne, working with parents, caregivers, and adults navigating complex life situations. Her practice, The Slow Work, draws on nervous system science, embodied awareness, and thirty years of Iyengar yoga practice to support people through stress, burnout, and the particular demands of raising children in demanding times. She serves as an advisor on the Deakin University School Attendance Project and writes regularly for the Victorian Parents Council on parent wellbeing, capacity, and family stress. www.theslowwork.com.au