At-Home Microbiome Tests Are Everywhere – But Do They Actually Tell You Anything Useful?

Have you ever spent a really long time looking at a diagram of butanoate metabolism? Or wondered if your Firmicutes are producing butyrate? I’ve been having all kinds of thoughts like this since sending my intestinal microbes to verified labs for identification and testing. I’m a food writer, not a science writer. But as I explain to my husband while googling “how to identify your microbiota”, it’s a logical professional evolution from food to digestion.

I’ve long been preoccupied by my colon. My father died of colon cancer when I was a teenager; mine is of the utmost concern. Digestive health has always been rather niche, not to mention private, but suddenly everyone talks about “gut health”.

We talk, specifically, about our microbiomes – the trillions of bacteria that inhabit us, which have been linked to sleep, heart health, mental health and ageing. I read aloud to my husband from the medical journal The Lancet : “The expectation that sequencing one’s gut microbiome might be the key to diagnosis and treatment where conventional approaches have failed is now fairly commonplace within gastroenterology clinics and beyond.” According to a publication called Nutrition in Clinical Practice , these days internet searches for “gut microbiome” and “gut microbiota” generate millions of results.

Amazon teems with microbiome books. Gut health is taking over TikTok. Scan your fridge for the word “probiotic”.

Brands are shilling directly to your bact.