The Diet of the Hadza Tribe is Higher in Gut Microbial Diversity, but Lower in Functional Diversity when Compared to a Westernized Diet

Abstract

The Western diet has recently been a point of scrutiny in the scientific community due to its association with various metabolic diseases such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and certain cancers. However, the unique hunter-gatherer diet of the Hadza tribe has been noted to be protective against such diseases, which has been partially attributed to their unique gut microbiome. While previous studies have compared the gut microbiomes of the Hadza to those of Western countries, very few have looked into its relationship to the gut microbiome’s metabolic pathways and functional diversity. In our study, we confirm the literature’s finding that the Hadza microbiome, when compared to a westernized gut microbiome, is higher in alpha diversity and demonstrates high beta diversity. Additionally, we found multiple beneficial taxa to be present in higher amounts in the Hadza gut microbiome with more dysbiotic species being present in the westernized one. Further, our study indicates that the Hadza surprisingly demonstrated lower functional diversity, while the westernized dataset contained more upregulated metabolic pathways.