The Microbiome Group

The Microbiome Group Microbiome Analysis with Viola Sampson BSc MCMA and Associates

26/06/2026

Vicky reflects on what she loves most about working with clients around the world supporting their microbiome health.

DM or comment to chat with Vicky, or book in a call with her. Link in bio or here:
https://www.themicrobiomegroup.com/aboutvicky

VIDEO: Vicky a white woman with short brown curly hair, wearing a navy jacket and white top, speaks to camera from her consulting room.

Sage is an underutilised herb in the kitchen, but incredibly robust to grow in your garden, so if you’re uncertain how t...
25/06/2026

Sage is an underutilised herb in the kitchen, but incredibly robust to grow in your garden, so if you’re uncertain how to cook with it, please read on.

Sage contains polyphenols and aromatic compounds that may support cognitive health, and also adds a great flavour to meals while contributing plant diversity for the gut microbiome.

It’s wonderfully easy to use in cooking, too. I love it chopped finely into roasted vegetables, stirred through beans or lentils, or added to simple dishes with olive oil, garlic, and lemon. Sage also works beautifully with squash, mushrooms, white fish, chicken, and whole grains, making it an easy herb to use regularly rather than just in festive cooking and sausages.

It’s quite a pungent herb, so don’t use too much of it.

A few simple ways to use sage:

🍃Stir chopped sage into roasted squash, sweet potato, or carrots.
🍃Add it to a bean stew or lentil soup for a more savoury, earthy flavour.
🍃Fry a few leaves gently in olive oil and spoon over pasta, gnocchi, or risotto.
🍃Mix it into stuffing, grain salads, or roasted mushrooms.

One interesting little fact: sage’s distinctive aroma comes from compounds that have been studied for their effects on memory and attention, which is part of why it’s often discussed in relation to cognitive health. It’s a great example of how herbs can do more than just season food - they can bring useful plant compounds into the diet in a very easy, enjoyable way.

✏📸 by Melody

I found these in a local park! They are an exceptionally rich source of polyphenols, among the highest of any fruit avai...
22/06/2026

I found these in a local park! They are an exceptionally rich source of polyphenols, among the highest of any fruit available in the UK, and most people have never eaten one.

You can’t buy mulberries in supermarkets — they bruise too easily and last roughly a day. If you want them, you have to know where a tree is, which means most people rarely or never eat them.

A greater variety of plant foods is associated with a more diverse gut bacterial community, which research associates with greater resilience. Every plant food brings a slightly different set of fibres and polyphenols that different bacterial species use. Mulberries bring something most microbiomes almost never encounter.

Their high polyphenol content is second only to ariona berry (aka chokeberry), a fruit that almost no one has heard of and even fewer people eat in the UK.

The red fruits in the photos contain polyphenol precursors to cyanidin-3-O-glucoside, the dominant anthocyanin in black mulberry. The ripening process sees the fruit building its anthocyanin load. Anthocyanins are poorly absorbed in our digestive system, so a significant proportion reaches the colon. This not only boosts beneficial gut bacterial populations but also generates health-promoting compounds as the bacteria metabolise the polyphenols.

Has anyone else found a mulberry tree near them?

✏️ 📸 by Viola

REFERENCE
Ercisli & Orhan (2007) Chemical composition of white (Morus alba), red (Morus rubra) and black (Morus nigra) mulberry fruits. Food Chemistry 103: 1380–1384
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2006.10.054

IMAGES
My hands picking ripe black mulberries straight from the branch and two mulberries cupped in my palm, with lots of red ones on the tree still ripening.

We were cutting back the veggie garden over the weekend and discovered several large plants of red and green chillies. I...
18/06/2026

We were cutting back the veggie garden over the weekend and discovered several large plants of red and green chillies.

I have always loved chillies and tend to use them in most of the food I cook. I do remember when eating too many would cause me severe gut pain, and I often have clients tell me they avoid nightshades as they contribute to their gut symptoms.

The nightshade family includes tomatoes, eggplant, capsicum and chillies. The active compound in chillies, capsaicin, has been studied for its effects on the gut microbiome in a small, controlled human feeding trial of 12 participants. Over six weeks, dietary capsaicin increased Faecalibacterium abundance across the group, with butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid important for gut lining integrity and immune function, rising significantly more in participants with one microbiome profile than another. In other words, how your body responds to capsaicin appears to depend on the specific bacterial composition of your gut.

This study was the only one I found that looked at the microbiome response to capsaicin in humans. It adds further weight to our clinical observations that individual response to foods is shaped by what is happening in the microbiome.

We often see clients with food intolerances in our clinical practice, and we also see people able to expand their diet following microbiome repair, including those with a nightshade intolerance. Many foods are able to be slowly reintroduced when the gut microbiome is re-balanced, and it is always our preference to increase variety rather than removing any foods groups.

If you react poorly to nightshades, you may benefit from microbiome analysis. DM me for more information.

✏️ 📸 by Vicky
IMAGE: A pile of homegrown red and green chillies, freshly picked, photographed from above on a white surface.

16/06/2026

If you ever needed permission to put a lettuce on your barbecue, this is it! Grilled little gem has a sweetness that raw leaves don’t, with a gentle, smoky char that shifts the whole character of the plant. I can’t describe it well enough to do it justice — it has to be experienced!

On my plate:

🥬 A little gem, halved, olive oil rubbed into the cut surface before it went on the grill.

🍡 Skewers of halloumi, courgette, and red pepper, layered with pesto. The basil, pine nuts and olive oil in the pesto are all great polyphenol sources for your gut microbiome, although the pleasure is reason enough to include it!

🌶️ A rice salad with black barley and wholegrain rice in a tomato and smoked paprika base from a pack. The black barley adds plant diversity and some prebiotic fibre as well as polyphenols.

💚 A side of foraged common hogweed, with its fragrant, almost parsnip-like flavour, also added wild plant diversity to my week.

🍋‍🟩Grilled globe artichoke hearts. These are one of the most polyphenol-rich vegetables you can eat! At larger portions like this, it also functions as a prebiotic, feeding beneficial bacteria.

The whole plate is summer deliciousness.

Sign up to our free newsletter for more coming soon on overlooked microbiome foods like these (link in bio).

✏️ 📸 by Viola

VIDEO: A small barbecue smokes quietly on a still summer evening. The camera drifts slowly toward a vivid plate of grilled vegetables, then settles back to take in the whole scene.



Recently I decided to try lavender tea as I have a small lavender plant growing in my garden. Lavender has been studied...
11/06/2026

Recently I decided to try lavender tea as I have a small lavender plant growing in my garden.

Lavender has been studied for its effects on anxiety and low mood in humans - including a 2014 Cochrane review using an oral lavender oil preparation called
Silexan - which found good reductions in anxiety symptoms comparable to anti-anxiety medications.

Stress and digestive upsets often go hand in hand for many people, as gut symptoms are intimately tied to your nervous system state. If lavender helps to calm that via your gut brain axis, the digestive benefits may follow. Some mechanistic studies have also shown that lavender has some antimicrobial effects on the gut microbiome.

While we don't yet have robust human trial data if you grow lavender in your garden, it's worth using from time to time to add to the diversity of plants you eat in your diet.

A couple of small ways include:
• Steep a small pinch of dried (or fresh) flowers for 5–10 minutes and strain for a tea - it's a bitter herb, so don't put in too much.
• Sprinkle a small amount onto a fruit salad or yoghurt even.

➡Save this post if you're growing it and weren't sure what to do with it.

✏️ 📸 by Melody (lavender plants in my garden and local park)

REFERENCES
Woelk & Schläfke (2010) A multi-center, double-blind, randomised study of the Lavender oil preparation Silexan in comparison to Lorazepam for generalized anxiety disorder. Phytomedicine 17(2): 94–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.phymed.2009.10.006

Kasper S, Gastpar M, Müller WE, Volz HP, Möller HJ, Schläfke S, Dienel A. Lavender oil preparation Silexan is effective in generalized anxiety disorder--a randomized, double-blind comparison to placebo and paroxetine. Int J Neuropsychopharmacol. 2014 Jun;17(6):859-69. doi: 10.1017/S1461145714000017. Epub 2014 Jan 23. PMID: 24456909.

Look at this beautiful cheese! The rind is covered in flower petals and I found it at a stall in South London at the wee...
08/06/2026

Look at this beautiful cheese! The rind is covered in flower petals and I found it at a stall in South London at the weekend. The taste was incredible. with strong floral notes of rose and cornflower, alongside a subtle bitterness and the rich, creamy saltiness of the manchego itself. I had to buy some.

Each cheese on a stall like this will have a unique microbiome, shaped by where it’s made — the local environment, the ingredients, the weather, and even the microbiome of the makers themselves!

The rinds have the most complex microbial communities, while the insides of cheeses tend to host a smaller diversity of bacteria. In the case of blue cheeses, there are also colourful moulds.

Research on the role of moulds in our diet and gut microbiome is still in its early stages, but the evidence that fermented foods containing live cultures of bacteria, yeasts and moulds can support gut microbiome health is growing.

The manchego with veins of sweet black garlic (pictured in the last photo) was also amazing. If only I could share tastes as well as photos!

Do you want to learn about your own microbiome and how different foods can change your gut bacterial profile? Book a call with a member of my team to talk about testing (link in bio).

✏️ 📸 by Viola

REFERENCES
Leeuwendaal et al (2022) Fermented Foods, Health and the Gut Microbiome. Nutrients 14: 1527. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14071527

IMAGES: 1) A wedge of manchego on white wax paper, its rind and cut face showing with dried rose petals and other petals. 2-4) Three images from the same market stall: a table piled high with whole and cut artisan cheeses in every variety of rind and paste, showing the extraordinary range of textures, moulds and colours.

One of the worst foods you can eat with an imbalanced microbiome might also be one of the best foods you can eat for a h...
04/06/2026

One of the worst foods you can eat with an imbalanced microbiome might also be one of the best foods you can eat for a healthy one.

Jerusalem artichokes are one of the richest dietary sources of prebiotic fibres inulin and FOS. Your gut bacteria break down prebiotics to produce health-promoting short chain fatty acids. They also produce gas.

For someone with a balanced microbiome, that gas is almost unnoticeable. Some is used up by other bacteria and the rest passes through the gut painlessly. For someone with significant microbiome imbalances, where certain bacterial species are depleted or others are overgrown, prebiotic-rich foods can trigger bloating, cramping, flatulence and pain. We often see this in clients with IBS and Long Covid, and those whose microbiome hasn’t recovered following antibiotics.

A well-designed human trial in healthy adults found that daily consumption of Jerusalem artichoke inulin significantly increased Bifidobacteria, along with a smaller increase in the Lactobacillus group. We find these bacterial populations are often depleted in those with chronic gut conditions.

Prebiotic foods are essential for microbiome health, so the goal is to repair the microbiome to the point where eating them becomes enjoyable once more. In practice, this looks like a client who couldn’t tolerate Jerusalem artichokes at the start of their treatment programme being able to eat a full portion without symptoms. The food hasn’t changed. Their microbiome has. That shift is one of the clear markers of progress we look for in clinic.

If Jerusalem artichokes, or other prebiotic foods like onions, garlic or beans, cause you problems, that’s worth listening to — not as a reason to avoid them, but as information about what your microbiome might need.

Share this post with someone who struggles with prebiotic foods.

✏️ 📸 by Viola

REFERENCES
Ramnani et al (2010) Prebiotic effect of fruit and vegetable shots containing Jerusalem artichoke inulin: a human intervention study. Br J Nutr 104: 233–240 https://doi.org/10.1017/S000711451000036X

IMAGE Viola’s hands holding fresh Jerusalem artichokes.

Fresh figs have always been one of my favourites, and I think they are underrated when it comes to gut health.They’re ri...
01/06/2026

Fresh figs have always been one of my favourites, and I think they are underrated when it comes to gut health.

They’re rich in dietary fibre and polyphenols, including flavonoids and anthocyanins, which feed and diversify the bacterial populations in the gut.

They have also been studied specifically for constipation. A randomised controlled trial found that fig paste supplementation over eight weeks significantly reduced colon transit time and improved stool consistency in people with functional constipation.

I threw together this salad for lunch this week to pair with my grilled barramundi: rocket, fresh figs, goats’ cheese, walnuts, olive oil and lemon. Delicious.

Tell me in the comments — are you a fig fan, and what do you do with them?

✏️ 📸 by Vicky

REFERENCES
Baek et al. (2016) Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of Ficus carica paste for the management of functional constipation. Asia Pac J Clin Nutr 25(3): 487–496.
https://doi.org/10.6133/apjcn.092015.06


IMAGES: Two close-up shots of fresh figs, one whole and halved showing the gorgeous crimson interior, one cut face in detail, alongside an overhead shot of the finished salad with figs, goats’ cheese and walnuts.

27/05/2026

Who said hummus has to be made with chickpeas? I didn’t have any. I didn’t have lemons either, and I didn’t have much time. What I did have was a tin of butter beans, some raw cider vinegar, unhulled tahini, olive oil, garlic powder, salt, pepper and dried oregano.

Butter beans feed a range of beneficial gut bacteria, including Bifidobacterium. I only lightly strained them because the water also contains prebiotic GOS — specifically raffinose and stachyose. Most recipes tell you to rinse them away. If you’re managing IBS symptoms, you’ll probably want to do that to reduce the FODMAP content of the beans, but for everyone else, keeping some of that water is likely to support your microbiome health.

I included oregano partly because it tastes good with beans and partly because dried herbs are an underrated source of polyphenols that feed a wider range of beneficial gut bacteria. The raw cider vinegar adds acidity and live cultures. The unhulled tahini has more fibre than hulled tahini, as well as more polyphenols and more calcium and iron. The garlic powder was simply a time saver — I didn’t want to bother with peeling and crushing fresh cloves. It still contains some prebiotic inulin and FOS, just a bit less than fresh garlic.

I made a plate with a rainbow of colours that indicate a diverse range of polyphenols to support a diversity of gut bacteria. I added some fermented beet sauerkraut for more colour, taste, plant diversity and live bacteria.

Save this for when you need a quick lunch idea.

✏️ 📸 by Viola

VIDEO: Five images: butter beans and ingredients before blending, blending with a stick blender, finished hummus on a white plate, with raw salad veg and fermented beetroot.

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