Every blockbuster drug eventually gets a natural understudy. In June 2023, TikTok cast berberine, a bitter yellow plant compound, as "nature's Ozempic." CBC News had to explain why doctors were not applauding. By the following spring, a US company had skipped the nickname and named its capsule GLP-1 Probiotic.

Its star is Akkermansia muciniphila, a gut bacterium with a name like an Old Master painting. It has the diet of a houseguest who eats the curtains, living in the mucus lining your intestine and feeding on it. People with obesity or type 2 diabetes tend to carry less of it. Metabolic researchers cannot stop talking about it.

The landmark human trial of akkermansia found no change in GLP-1, and a good dinner feeds the colony you already own with evidence at least as solid as the capsule's. Viva doesn't sell akkermansia, so we set the table instead. The guest of honour is microscopic, and it arrives hungry.

Dinner table of chicory, leeks, lentils and yogurt with one akkermansia capsule, testing the natural Ozempic claim

The short answer: The akkermansia natural Ozempic claim does not match the human evidence. In the main trial, published in Nature Medicine in 2019, three months of akkermansia supplements left GLP-1, the hormone Ozempic imitates, unchanged, and weight loss was not significant. Inulin-rich foods such as chicory and leeks are an emerging, food-first way to feed the akkermansia already in your gut.

  • Pasteurized akkermansia improved insulin sensitivity by about 29 percent over three months in the 2019 UCLouvain pilot
  • Inulin at 10 g a day raised akkermansia against placebo over six weeks in adults with diabetes
  • A three-week Monash University crossover trial found akkermansia rose sharply on a typical Australian diet
Course On the plate How sure are we
Aperitif Chicory, leeks, Jerusalem artichokes: the inulin fibres Emerging. Inulin raised akkermansia against placebo in one six-week trial, in adults with diabetes
Main Onions, garlic, lentils and good bread Emerging. One short crossover trial, mostly in people with IBS
Dessert Pomegranate Emerging. One small study with no placebo group
With coffee An akkermansia capsule Emerging. One three-month pilot in insulin-resistant adults. Not sold at Viva

Aperitif: meet the guest of honour

Akkermansia was first grown at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. The method sounds like a dare. Muriel Derrien and her colleagues took a sample of human stool and offered its bacteria nothing to eat except stomach mucus. One microbe thrived on the menu. In 2004 they named it for Antoon Akkermans, a Dutch microbial ecologist. Its species name means, roughly, mucus-lover.

Pale chicory leaves filled with soft white cheese on a ceramic platter, an inulin-rich food for akkermansia

That appetite is the whole story. The bacterium grazes on your gut lining, the lining regrows, and undigested fibre keeps the neighbourhood fed.

So the evening opens on bitterness. Pale chicory leaves arrive filled with soft cheese, beside leeks in a mustard vinaigrette and Jerusalem artichokes roasted until they taste of hazelnut. All three are rich in inulin. Your own enzymes cannot touch this fibre, and your gut bacteria ferment it with enthusiasm. Feeding the colony you already carry is the best-tested way to grow it.

Nutripur Inulin Fibre+ chicory root inulin powder with Bacillus coagulans probiotic

NUTRIPUR Inulin fiber+ with probiotic (180 g), $34.95

On nights when nobody is roasting artichokes, this chicory inulin vanishes into your morning coffee without a trace of taste. Start with half a scoop, because a sudden rush of fermentable fibre tends to announce itself at the office.

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The main course: why does the anti-bloating diet starve it?

A pot of lentils has been simmering with garlic and bay since six. The onions went in whole, and by now they have collapsed into something sweet enough to spread on the bread.

Steaming cast-iron pot of lentils with collapsed sweet onions, garlic and bay leaves

Every item on that plate is high in FODMAPs, the fermentable sugars that a low-FODMAP diet removes for people with irritable bowel syndrome. The diet was developed at Monash University in Melbourne. A Monash team later published an awkward footnote to their own success. Volunteers ate a low-FODMAP menu and a typical Australian one for three weeks each, and the ordinary diet sent akkermansia sharply upward.

Anyone who truly needs the low-FODMAP plan should keep it, ideally with a dietitian beside them. For everyone else, the onions you might cut before a big night out are the very food this bacterium lives on.

Dessert: pomegranate, if your gut is invited

Pomegranate arrives in a chilled glass bowl, the seeds bright as broken jewellery against yogurt. Here the guest list gets exclusive.

Its tannins only become interesting once your gut bacteria turn them into a compound called urolithin A. Not everyone's gut can. In people who make plenty, akkermansia ran far higher after a month of pomegranate. Those who could not make it saw little change. The dessert does the most for guests whose gut already knows what to do with it.

Such favouritism is irritating and also rather charming. Your microbes decide how much a pomegranate can do for you, and there is no way to know without eating it.

Navitas Organics pomegranate powder made from dried organic pomegranates

NAVITAS ORGANICS Pomegranate Powder (227 g), $36.09

Navitas dries whole organic pomegranate to a ruby powder, for the months when the fruit costs as much as the wine. A spoonful turns plain yogurt the colour of a good lipstick.

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Coffee and a capsule: is akkermansia really a natural Ozempic?

Someone at your table has a pill organizer, and inside it is the capsule. Its case rests on a single trial from UCLouvain in Belgium, published in Nature Medicine in 2019. Overweight, insulin-resistant volunteers took akkermansia or a placebo every day for three months.

Pomegranate seeds scattered over thick yogurt in a chilled glass bowl on a dinner table

The results had a twist worthy of Louis Pasteur. Heat-killed, pasteurized bacteria did better than live ones, improving insulin sensitivity by about 29 percent. Weight was another matter, with a difference of 2.3 kg that could have been chance. The researchers also measured GLP-1, the hormone Ozempic imitates, and it did not budge.

Two of the senior authors co-founded the company that now makes the ingredient. A promising pilot is a reason for a bigger trial. It is not a drug.

Green tea sits on the same tray. Its effect on akkermansia has so far been convincing mainly in mice, which is no reason to leave the pot full.

Aiya ceremonial grade Japanese matcha green tea powder tin

AIYA Ceremonial Matcha (30 g), $37.89

This ceremonial matcha is mild, grassy and naturally sweet when whisked thin, the way it is served in Japan. Pour it after dinner as the course that asks nothing of anyone.

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By midnight the capsule is still the smallest thing on the table, and the only course with a patent application behind it. Everything else fed the same bacterium and tasted of something on the way down.

This article is general information and does not replace advice from your doctor or pharmacist.

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Frequently asked questions

Is the "GLP-1 Probiotic" the formula its maker tested?

No. Pendulum's published trial tested a five-strain formula with added inulin in 76 adults with type 2 diabetes, and post-meal glucose improved. The capsule it launched in 2024 lists three strains, and every author of that trial was a company employee.

Is akkermansia safe to take in pregnancy?

Nobody has shown that it is. When the European Food Safety Authority judged pasteurized akkermansia safe as a food ingredient in 2021, it excluded pregnant and breastfeeding women. If you are expecting, feed your own colony with food and skip the capsule.

Will eating less raise my akkermansia?

Not necessarily. In a French study of adults with overweight, most of them women, those who started with the most akkermansia saw it fall during six weeks of calorie restriction. They still had the biggest metabolic improvements, so your starting point matters more than the diet.

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