Are you sick of giving up your favorite foods to lose a few pounds? Well, a UK professor thinks we should forget about counting calories, and focus more on eating certain foods that aid in the creation of good bacteria in our stomachs. And lucky for us, a lot of those foods are delicous.

Professor Tim Spector of King’s College London and author of “The Diet Myth: The Real Science Behind What We Eat,” recommends eating dairy products like cheese, which are “the richest sources of living healthy microbes and fungi;” oils, nuts and seeds, which act as a fertilizer for microbes; as well as chocolate and red wine.

“We ingest these microbes and they end up in our gut, where they diversify with the new foods we introduce over the years,” he explained. “The more diverse foods we eat, the more varieties of microbes in our bodies, which makes us healthier.”

One thing you can’t eat though is junk food. Spector notes that fatty, sugary foods actually kill the helpful bacteria, and allows toxic ones to grow. Processed foods are also a no-no because they contain chemicals.

Source: The Daily Mail