Is increasing gut efficiency really a sensible goal in a nation that vastly overeats and has an obesity epidemic? There are surely far more basic steps we should be taking, such as increasing the efficiency of food production and improving our health by eating less meat.
That’s not clear. Current bacteria do work on the indigestible fiber and produce fatty acids and gases as end products. Bacteria designed to digest cellulose would presumably have a different chain. What that would be I can’t predict.
Riemann, your post sparked another idea for me. One of the things that makes meat so impractical and carbon-intensive to produce is that we have to raise crops for the animals to eat, before we eat them. Cattle, of course, can digest cellulose, but pigs can’t. If the concept of making humans more efficient digesters seems off-putting, what about pigs and fowl? A more efficient food system would use less fuel for tractors and combines and less farm chemicals.
I hadn’t really intended to push so hard on this concept. I’m not even a farmer. It’s just that it got me to thinkin’.
If you bred pigs to have a large cecum, you’d also be increasing the cost to farmers to raise them. Animals with complicated gastrointestinal tracts (large cecum, multiple chambered stomachs) suffer pathology as a result.
Anyone with a horse can show you vet bills for colic episodes. Anyone with a rabbit can tell you about gastrointestinal stasis due to small changes in micro flora.