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#Abstract  There is little to no information on the effects of ingested microorganisms that are present in our diets, and in fact, even the basic questions of which microbes, how many of them, and how much they vary from diet to diet and meal to meal, have not been answered. We characterized the microbiota of three different dietary patterns in order to estimate: the average total amount of daily microbes ingested via food and beverages and their composition in three daily meal plans representing three different dietary patterns. The three dietary patterns are: 1) the Average American (AA): focused on convenience foods, 2) USDA recommended (USDA): emphasizing fruits and vegetables, lean meat, dairy, and whole grains, and 3) Vegan (VEG): excluding all animal products. Meals were prepared in a home kitchen or purchased at restaurants and blended, followed by microbial analysis that included aerobic, anaerobic, yeast and mold plate counts as well as 16S rRNA PCR survey analysis. Based on plate counts, the USDA meal plan had the highest total amount of microbes at \(1.3 X 10^9\) CFU for the entire per  day, followed by the VEG meal plan and the AA meal plan at \(6 X 10^6 \)and \(1.4 X 10^6\) CFU per day  respectively. The 3-fold higher total amount of microbes in the USDA meal plan is likely due to the presence of fermented foods (yogurt and cottage cheese). No significant variation was found in microbial community composition among the three dietary patterns, suggesting that the types and diversity of microbes that we eat are determined by factors unrelated to dietary pattern. Further studies are needed to determine the impact of ingested microbes on the intestinal microbiota, the extent of variation across foods, meals and diets, and whether dietary microbes are implicated in disease processes. The answers to these questions will reveal whether dietary microbial approaches beyond probiotics taken as supplements but rather ingested as foods are an important potential approach for modifying the intestinal microbiota in various states of dysbiosis.