Healthy food design based on gut microbiota metabolic flux

Background: Diet is a crucial factor in preventing the high incidence of chronic diseases and reducing medical costs, with the intestine serving as an important target for nutritional intervention. In the future, it will be even more important to think about what the gut microbiota "wants to eat". Scope and approach: This review introduces the metabolic flux regulation mechanism and evaluation system in the intestine, and further summarizes the development process of metabolic flux targeted food and its application in healthy food design, providing a perspective for the creation and large-scale promotion of new products targeting gut health. Key findings and conclusions: Many metabolic pathways occur in the microbial cells of the human intestine, and the metabolic differences and interactions between different microbial populations, leading to a complex metabolic environment in the intestine. Through dietary regulation, restoring the gut microbiota diversity, increasing the relative abundance of beneficial bacteria, and reducing harmful metabolic products, thereby altering the physiological and pathological states of the host, will become a trend and hot topic in the development of the health food industry. With the development of artificial intelligence and multi-omics technologies, techniques for identifying potential intervention targets in gut microbiota and its metabolites have gradually matured, which is meaningful for improving health condition by targeting intestinal metabolic fluxes to regulate gut microbiota composition.