Adventures in Gut Bacteria

 My theory: traveller's diarrhea is caused by eating things your gut flora can't help you eat. 

 I've had issues with peas. Gas and such. I figured this was a good test case. 

 Tried fermenting raw peas and using them as inoculation. It kinda worked. Proved the basic idea, but was suboptimal.

 Tried regularly eating small amounts of raw peas. Worked much better.

 I explain this using weed/cultivar dynamics. The weeds grow first. However, slowly, over time, the healthy cultivars crowd out the weeds. Trees grow slowly, but forests do form and choke out the weeds even though the weeds get there first.

 I get the proper organisms by eating raw peas. The gut is a bioreactor. It rots your food, and then you absorb the rot products. The correct rot germs are already on the peas, I just have to eat the peas without killing the right germs with heat. All this takes time to describe, but really it's simple. To build ability to digest X, eat raw X.

 I eat a small amount, a couple handfuls, to cut down on dissonant byproducts from the weeds. Some minimal level is not only tolerable, but invisible. If I consistently nurture the trees, I get a proper healthy forest. The good germs seep into the cracks and crevices and become well-established, able to ambush the weeds before they can cause problems. 

 At least, that's my explanation. 

 Alternative: plants are all poisonous. If you consistently eat raw plants, you breed pesticide-resistant strains of gut bacteria. If you eat them too inconsistently, the plants kill the germs that are supposed to be digesting them. Unlikely, but I can't rule it out.

I used to be able to handle peas without issues. I expect my digestives were wiped out by an unwise course of antibiotics. 

 Next I'll perhaps revive my ability to eat nuts.  

 You can't lose the ability to eat meat. You're made of raw meat. You can't lose contact with raw meat. This is probably why there's no such thing as an obligate herbivore. Apoptosis is more properly called autodigestion. The cell is dismantled with its own digestive enzymes. If you lost the ability to digest yourself, you would die.

 Are better organisms more complicated? Is that why digestion germs grow slowly?
 Also curious: does the gut lining help? Does it put its finger on the scale against weeds? How does it do that? How does it know which is which? How does it know what good germs want? 

 I expect further experience to teach me more.