What's in the microbiome of the foods we eat?

Microbes are part of the food we eat and can influence our own microbiome, but we know very little about the microbes in our foods. Now, researchers have developed a database of the 'food microbiome' by sequencing the metagenomes of 2,533 different foods. They identified 10,899 food-associated microbes, half of which were previously unknown species, and showed that food-associated microbes account for around 3% of the adult and 56% of the infant gut microbiome on average.