As diet is considered the major regulator of the gut ecosystem, the overall objective of this work was to demonstrate that a detailed knowledge of the phytochemical composition of food could add to our understanding of observed changes in functionality and activity of the gut microbiota. We used metatranscriptomic data from a human dietary intervention study to develop a network that consists of >400 compounds present in the administered plant-based diet linked to 609 microbial targets in the gut. Approximately 20% of the targeted bacterial proteins showed significant changes in their gene expression levels, while functional and topology analyses revealed that proteins in metabolic networks with high centrality are the most