Eating foods covered in bacteria may sound gross at first — and certainly, chowing down on foods contaminated with say, E. coli can be dangerous — but as we're learning more and more, there is such a thing as good bugs, too.In fact, you may have heard that your gut is already teeming with trillions of microbes, encompassing at least 1,000 different species , that aid in digestion, help boost your immune system, and possibly even regulate your mood. Known as probiotics, eating these various strains of "good" bacteria and yeasts found in fermented foods like yogurt (a probiotic classic) may help boost the diversity of your own personal bug garden in your gut, which in turn, may improve your health, especially in relation to certain digestive issues What's more exciting is that probiotics have also been linked to helping other health issues as well. For instance, in one paper , published last year in Psychiatry Research, scientists found that participants who ate more fermented foods were less likely to have social anxiety. Another study found that people who took probiotic supplements were less likely to ruminate on bad feelings, a tendency associated with both anxiety and depression.