You need to eat your whole grains, vegetables and fruits to get all that good fiber. How many times have you heard this statement? It’s everywhere from Metamucil ads to cereal boxes, nutrition websites and bestsellers.
Normally, the message is eat less. But then when it comes to fiber, it seems you can never get enough. Some think fiber is the end all be all, that precious substance found only in plant foods that has miraculous benefits for human health.
Is fiber good or bad? I don’t think it’s one or the other, nothing to be overly concerned about or anything. Let’s just try put a few things we know about fiber together to get a clearer picture. By the way, before the 70’s nobody talked about the importance of fiber. Google Denis Burkitt aka The Fiber Man to know the historical context of this fiber revolution. He’s the man behind what we’ll call the fiber hypothesis.
First off, what is fiber? That’s kind of like asking a person what is cholesterol or what is a hormone. Everyone has heard about those but when it comes to explaining what they are, not many people can give you a decent answer. Most people are just content knowing that fiber is found mostly in grains, veggies and fruits. Dietary fiber is undigestible plant matter, it’s kind of like the squeleton of a plant. There’s fiber in all plants, just different kinds, soluble, insoluble and they have different chemical formulas. Soluble fiber ferments in your gut, the bacteria living there eats up the fiber and converts it to short chain fatty acids. Some foods contain more of one kind of fiber than the other. For example, wheat bran is considered an insoluble fiber, whereas carrots are in the soluble category. The insoluble kind of fiber has the reputation of acting like a broom through your digestive tract. It does not get fermented.
Fiber is considered a carbohydrate but it does not have the same effect as sugar. It will not raise your insulin, on the contrary it is known to balance blood glucose by slowing down the release of insulin. Most people on low carb diets subtract the total fiber from the total carb count.
Total Carbohydrates: 14
Fiber: 9
14-9=5
5 net carbs, not bad! I can eat that, in moderation (whatever that means!) So, fiber’s not evil. The more fiber is in a food, the less carbs are actually in it. The problem I have with fiber is that it’s overrated in the treatment of or prevention of alot of diseases. A common problem is constipation. Most people think constipation automatically equals not enough fiber in the diet. This is simply untrue. Why do people on very low carb diets or meat only diets experience improvement in bowel movements and others on fruit and vegetable only diets still have issues with constipation? I’m not saying all low carbers are not constipated. I’m just saying that fiber isn’t always the answer. I think it’s more complicated. I’ll give you my example just for fun. And I am not making this up, I swear!
My whole life I had stomach aches, I always felt constipated, bloated…just really uncomfortable. Ok, so most of my life I was on the standard american diet minus the sodas. (Thank goodness!) It was pretty low fiber, low fat, low protein…pretty much alot of grain products. I decide to get healthy, get on this whole high fiber bandwagon. I’m buying heroic amounts of leafy greens, vegetables of all kinds and lots of fruit and I start blending away and making these huge salads. I never counted how many fiber grams were in these meals but needless to say they were much higher than what everyone I knew was eating. Was I feeling better? Was I going more than before? No… and I didn’t get it. I was doing everything right, fiber, lots of water, no cheese and meat. The whole bit!
I get frustrated. Duuhh! Who wants to spend an hour washing and cutting up all these veggies anyway?
So I try low carb, very low carb. The first weeks were beef, pork, chicken, cheese, fish, a bit of cooked spinach and saeurkraut, avocado, tomatoes…Drastically lower fiber than before. What happens? Magic… no more cramping, no more bloating, less gas and I finally go without having to …ok that’s just too much information. You get the picture. What a relief!!
Less fiber, more fat. Erika, do you mean to say that the fat acted as a lubricant instead of sawdust clogging you up more like fiber was doing? Yes. Another reason why I love fat. I should of known about this years ago. When I was a kid, my grandfolks would take castor oil or a tablespoon of olive oil with their meals to “stay regular”.
People back then didn’t have much respect for fiber, it was called roughage and it didn’t belong in your plate. Mom would carefully peel the carrots, potatoes, apples before serving them. Kids didn’t snack on raw apples like today. They ate properly processed apples, a product called apple sauce. A nice warm bowl of apple sauce was nourishment. Eating a raw apple? Umm no, deer do that… When we process foods in our kitchens we are making the nutrition more available to us.
The only fiber I avoid is the one in grain products and legumes. These seem to give me trouble.
So if I resume how I see fiber it kind of goes like this: can be your friend, can be your foe if you take too much and defenitely won’t work miracles, ok?
If you thought taking your All Bran in the morning was gonna prevent colon cancer, check out Barry Groves’s article on that. http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/colon-cancer2.html Save yourself the embarrassment of buying an industrial waste product and try having eggs and bacon instead.
If you want to try increasing your fiber intake slowly, I suggest looking at the carb to fiber ratio. Try choosing the foods with the lowest carb content and highest fiber for weight loss purposes. My favorite choices would be: spinach, collard greens, avocado, swiss chard, brussel sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus…
