From side dish to superhero – kimchi just leveled up.
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Tiny plastics are appearing inside us due to pollution. But fermented foods like kimchi might be able to help with beneficial gut bacteria. REALLY?!
Enter the World Institute of Kimchi – a REAL place. There, Jisu Lee and team identified a helpful kimchi bacterium that binds to plastic, and carries it out of the gut.
They measured how well it binds to plastic in human intestinal fluids. About sixty percent of plastic bound to the bacteria. In mice, the bacteria boosted plastic excretion nearly THREE times more than without it.
WOW! Let’s all crunch some kimchi and blast out some plastic!
Reference: Lee, J., Lee, M. J., Jung, M.-J., Kim, Y. B., Kim, Y., Yun, J. U., Nam, S., Oh, Y. J., Whon, T. W., & Lee, S. H. (2026). Efficient biosorption of nanoplastics by food-derived lactic acid bacterium. Bioresource Technology, 447, 134234. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2026.134234