The old saying goes: you are what you eat. This appears to carry through into the microbial content of one’s gastrointestinal tract as well.

Dr. Alyssa Crittenden, an anthropologist at The University of Nevada Las Vegas, compared the bacteria living inside an indigenous African tribe with that of an urban dwelling control group to study the differences.

Dr. Alyssa Crittenden is a behavioral ecologist and nutritional anthropologist at UNLV. She works among the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania, East Africa.

Her research interests include the evolution of the human diet, the evolution of childhood, the development of children’s prosocial behavior, and the origins of the division of labor between the sexes. She applies the principles of evolutionary theory to the study of human behavior and cultural diversity. Her work crosses several disciplines, including anthropology, ecology, nutrition, and biology. Read the full article here.