It's the diet.
City dwellers tend to eat a lot more unhealthy foods. They also eat a lot less vegetables, fruit and nuts than their rural country(wo)men.
You want more microbes in your gut? Eat more plant-based food.
City dwellers tend to eat a lot more unhealthy foods. They also eat a lot less vegetables, fruit and nuts than their rural country(wo)men.
You want more microbes in your gut? Eat more plant-based food.
Ironically, cities (particularly affluent ones, but in general) probably have better access to fresh and healthy produce than do medium or low-income rural areas. Some of that is supply and demand (the economics of moving bulk produce favor large population clusters), and some of it is pricing (affluent consumers prefer cities and suburbs on average). You can see these trends in the USDA's Food Atlas[1], which shows lots of rural areas with poor access to produce.
[1]: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-...
That said bushland in Australia has natives that you can’t buy in the supermarket. So there is that.
But the average person probably doesn’t forage.
Can't find it for meat in general, but it seems that rural areas eat significantly more beef than suburban or urban dwellers.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/outlooks/37388/29633_ldpm13....
> flimsy evidence which isn't true [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3365871/]
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