Food environments and gut microbiome health: availability of healthy foods, alcohol, and tobacco in a rural Oklahoma tribal community

Background Prior research suggests that dysbiotic gut microbiomes may contribute to elevated health risks among American Indians. Diet plays a key role in maintaining a healthy gut microbiome, yet suboptimal food environments within American Indian communities make obtaining nutritious food difficult.Objective This project characterizes the retail food environment within a rural tribal community, focused on the availability of foods that enhance the health and diversity of the gut microbiome, as well as products that reduce microbiome health (alcohol and tobacco).Design Audits were conducted of all retail stores that sell food within nine communities within the Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribal Jurisdictional Area in western Oklahoma.Main measures Freedman Grocery Store Survey.Key results Alcohol and tobacco were generally far more available in stores than foods that support a healthy gut microbiome, including fruits, vegetables, lean meats, and whole grain bread. Out of the four store types identified in the study area, only supermarkets and small grocers offered a wide variety of healthy foods needed to support microbiota diversity. Supermarkets sold the greatest variety of healthy foods but could only be found in the larger communities. Convenience stores and dollar stores made up 75% of outlets in the study area and offered few options for maintaining microbiome health. Convenience stores provided the only food source in one-third of the communities. With the exception of small grocers, alcohol and tobacco products were widely stocked across all store types.Conclusions The retail food environment in the Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribal Jurisdictional Area offered limited opportunities for maintaining a healthy and diverse microbiome, particularly within smaller rural communities. Additional research is needed to explore the relationship between food environment, dietary intake, and microbiome composition. Interventions are called for to increase the availability of “microbe-friendly” foods (e.g., fresh produce, plant protein, fermented and high fiber foods) in stores.Ye

Oral microbiome diversity among Cheyenne and Arapaho individuals from Oklahoma

Objectives There is a major ascertainment bias in microbiome research, with individuals of predominately European ancestry living within metropolitan areas dominating most studies. Here we present a study of the salivary microbiome within a North American Indian community. This research is the culmination of four years of collaboration and community engagement with Cheyenne & Arapaho (C&A) tribal members from western Oklahoma. Materials and Methods Using 16S rRNA gene amplification and next‐generation sequencing, we generated microbial taxonomic inventories for 37 individuals representing five towns within the C&A tribes. For comparison, we performed the same laboratory techniques on saliva samples from 20 non‐native individuals (NNI) from Norman, Oklahoma. Results The C&A participants differ from the NNI in having reduced within‐individual species richness and higher between‐individual variation. Unsupervised clustering analyses reveal that three ecological groupings best fit the data, and while C&A individuals include assignments to all three groups, the NNI individuals are assigned to only one group. One of the ecological groups found exclusively among C&A participants was characterized by high abundance of the oral bacterial genus Prevotella. Discussion The C&A and NNI participants from Oklahoma have notable differences in their microbiome diversity, with a wider range of variation observed among the C&A individuals, including a higher frequency of bacteria implicated in systemic disorders. Overall, this study highlights the importance of engagement with indigenous communities, and the need for an improved understanding of human microbiome diversity among underrepresented groups and those individuals living outside of metropolitan areas