Episode 45 - New Study Finds That Kimchi Removes Microplastics From The Body: Should We Give it to Our Dogs?

4/14/2026

A new study was published this week, showing that a specific strain of probiotic found in kimchi is extremely good at binding up and carrying microplastics out of the body.

We and our dogs are surrounded by plastic, it’s inescapable, and the accumulation of nanoparticles of plastic in our bodies is also inescapable - and very bad for our and our dogs' health.

So the student question this episode is:

“Should we be giving our dogs kimchi?”

In this episode I serve up:

The practical takeaways from the kimchi study for canine nutrition
The “Foodome” project and network analysis of food
Why the next big thing is “everything”

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To read the transcript for this episode, click the link below.

Transcript - Episode 45

I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist., and this is a Puppy Culture Potluck podcast. You bring the topics, we bring the conversation.

This episode is going to verge around a bit, but stick with me. It's interesting and I think very important stuff. So first, a little context for this episode's question.

This week, a new study came out showing that probiotics found in kimchi have an ability to bind up microplastics and carry them out of the body, specifically, a strain of Lactobacillus called Leuconostoc mesenteroides CBA3656 way outperformed other strains of Lactobacillus in these trials, and that CBA3656 is something that's found in great quantities in kimchi. So the question my student has is, should we be adding kimchi to our dog's fermented food rotations?

The direct answer is yes. It's a great idea to add some mild kimchi to your dog's fermented food rotation, but not because of the findings in this study.

Let's talk about this. First, in case you don't know about microplastics, let me explain. We live in a world of plastic. We are constantly touching and consuming plastic, and not just in the obvious places like plastic food and beverage containers. It's everywhere. It's in our groundwater. It's in our furniture. It's in textiles, building materials, paint, personal care products, toys, tires. The water we drink passes through hoses and plastic pipes. It's literally inescapable. We are surrounded by plastic, and all of that plastic is continually breaking down and shedding nanoparticles of plastic, and those nanoparticles settle into every bit of our environment. Nano plastic is in the air we breathe. It's everywhere in our food supply. It's in the water we drink.

The nano plastic particles are so tiny that they can enter your bloodstream through your lungs, gut, even potentially through your skin. They can infiltrate into every part of your body and collect on every organ. They're so tiny, they can even slip through the blood brain barrier and settle on your brain. So those nano plastics are everywhere in our environment, and those particles get into our bodies. We are full of it. It gets into our vital organs. It causes inflammation. And not to freak you out, but let's just say the effect on our health and the health of our dogs is not good.

So when you see a study that says kimchi can carry nano plastics out of your body, it's pretty exciting stuff. But let's unpack this because I do think there is an important takeaway, but it's a bigger picture takeaway then kimchi removes microplastics from your body.

When we say probiotic, it's really shorthand for thousands and thousands of strains of beneficial species of bacterias and yeasts, and every different fermented food carries a different subset of these strains. There is a big difference between the probiotics in vegetables and dairy ferments. And even though they're all mostly using lactobacillus to ferment, there are thousands of different variations of lactobacilli.

So what the study found was when they gave this one specific strain of probiotic, the CBA3656, which is found in high quantities in kimchi. When they gave that to mice, those mice excreted much more nano plastics in their feces than mice who were given other probiotic strains. So that sounds like a win for kimchi. But before you run out and start pouring jars of kimchi into your dogs and your dinner bowls, it has to be pointed out that the scientists conducting this study are all from the World Institute of Kimchi, and specifically part of the Kimchi Functionality Research group.

So I'm not saying that they're biased, but you have to understand that they are specifically studying kimchi, not other fermented foods. So the fact that this CBA3656 performed well in removing microplastics does not mean that there might not be other probiotics in other fermented foods that might perform just as well or better.

There are strains of Leuconostoc mesenteroides in sauerkraut that are particular to sauerkraut. There are strains that are particular to every other vegetable and every combination of vegetables you can ferment. We've identified 13,000 strains of Lactobacillus so far, and it looks like we're just scratching the surface of what's out there. I'm also going to say kimchi is one of those foods that's more of a concept than a recipe. There is no one kimchi recipe.

My understanding is that every Korean person's grandmother has the recipe, and no two grandmothers have exactly the same recipe. So you can't be sure that the kimchi you're eating is going to confer exactly the same benefit as the kimchi in the study.

Now, I know this sounds like I'm sort of not buying the study, but no, that is not true. I 100% buy it. I'm excited by it. I think it's great when we have a solid piece of evidence such as this of a tangible and very specific benefit of a fermented food. But I think this study is just as much about what we don't know as what we do know. What about those other 12,999 strains of probiotics?

What's in there that hasn't been studied? What are you potentially missing by not including as much variety as possible in your diet and your dog's diets, both in fermented and non fermented foods? To me, what this study says is how every food has a story to tell and a role to play. The only difference between kimchi and some other fermented foods is that today someone happened to care enough about kimchi, and kimchi got a chance to tell a little bit of its story, and the other foods haven't found their people to tell their story yet. And I do believe that other foods will have just as big a story to tell, but we're never going to be able to hear every single story of every single food.

Trying to quantify the benefit of a particular food. Trying to isolate that one compound in particular, in one food that is beneficial or necessary, is a very 20th Century way of thinking. In my opinion, we need to move past that, because when we get hung up on a very specific nutrient or food, we tend to run out and start dumping huge quantities of that food into our diets, like that's going to fix everything. And when you dump large quantities of one food into your or your dog's diet, that's necessarily going to displace other foods. So you're getting a big quantity of one thing at the expense of variety, which is not a good thing. Furthermore, concentrated quantities of almost anything can have negative health effects. There's been a connection between eating very large quantities of kimchi and certain cancers.

The thought is that it's really the high salt in very large quantities of kimchi that's the carcinogen. But here's the thing. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. That's it. The fact that stupid huge quantities of kimchi could possibly cause some kinds of cancer does not in any way negate the enormous health benefits of eating fermented foods as add ons to a whole food, healthy, varied diet.

It's that funneling down to one food over and over again in large quantities that causes problems. Which brings me to the Foodome Project. I'm looking right now at a paper entitled Decoding the Foodome: Molecular Networks Connecting Diet and Health. I'm putting a link on the show page, and yes, you want to read this paper and look into this project. The whole thing, it's amazing.

I'm not going to give you a course level treatment of this topic, but here's the bottom line. Right now, most national databases around the world track approximately 150 nutritional components. This is what the study calls the legacy of 20th Century nutrition research. But, and this is from the paper, our research, combined with several databases focusing on the detailed chemical composition of foods, has documented the presence of more than 139,000 molecules in food ingredients.

Many of them play a major and well-documented role in human health. Therefore, there is a real need to document the, quote, dark matter, unquote, of nutrition.

So,me again, when you're looking at your complete and balanced or total nutrition label on a food for you or for your dog, you're probably leaving out, let's see, round numbers about 138,800 important food components that may or may not be in that particular food.

But you know, it's more than just taking a broad view of nutrients. The study also exposes how different foods that might ostensibly have the same nutrients can interact completely differently within the body and have completely different effects. Again, from the paper, food compounds can bind to human proteins to regulate their activity, a process whose implications on health can be captured only by a densely wired network of biochemicals.

This complex chemical interplay reflects the evolutionary processes that have shaped the genome and metabolism of various life forms, contributing to the staples of human diet. A network framework is therefore essential to comprehend the molecular mechanisms underlying the influence of diet on our health. Unlike traditional reductionist analyzes, network science acknowledges and quantifies the important dependencies among multiple factors contributing to a comprehensive modeling of concepts such as nutrient bioavailability, the food matrix, and disease phenotypes.

Okay, let me translate that. Once food goes into your body. It's interacting with a network of interdependent things, including but not limited to other foods also present in your body, your particular genes, and whatever pathogens or diseases you may have in your body at that moment. So a nutrient is not a nutrient is not a nutrient. It's a dynamic entity that has a differing effect on the body depending on a number of factors.

The Foodome study essentially seeks to understand that network and those factors, and how foods and their components actually interact within our bodies. But you, as a dog breeder, don't have to understand that network. It's like contemplating infinity. Not necessary. Because I only bring up the Foodome project to reinforce what we're always saying. That variety in diet for you and for your dogs is key.

Food doesn't live in a box. It is not defined by a nutritional label. No two whole foods are the same and the effect every food has is different. When it's combined with another food. Fermented foods are not going to have the same action as non fermented foods. Cooked foods are going to have a different action than raw foods.

Every species appropriate whole food has a story to tell and a unique benefit to confer. And the more of those foods you include in your end your dog's diet, the better off you and your dogs will be. So yeah, toss a little mild kimchi into your dog's bowl tonight and have a bite for yourself. It's a good thing to have in your rotation, but only one great player in what should be a cast of thousands.

If you liked this podcast, you'll love our new weaning course, Weaning For Life: From gut biome to behavior, a whole approach to early puppy nourishment. Available at puppyculture.com breeders. Are you looking to get your puppy started off on the right foot in their new homes? Check out our breeder bulk discounts on our puppy course: With Open Arms and a Level Head. How to welcome a puppy into your life. Available at puppyculture.com. And while you're there, don't forget to stock up on your exercise. Be your Puppys’ advocate and spay neuter booklets. Available at puppyculture.com. Well, that's it for this time. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.