Health Benefits of Dietary Fiber
The health benefits of dietary fiber are plentiful. Both soluble and insoluble fiber can help:
- Feeling satiated or full longer after meals: Soluble fiber slows down how quickly foods are digested, meaning most people feel full longer after fiber-rich meals.
- Helping lower disease risk: Due to fiber’s many health benefits, a high fiber diet is associated with a lower risk of many diseases, including obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and others.
Soluble Fiber
Soluble fiber slows down digestion and can help:
- Lowering fat absorption: As a thick, spread-out gel, soluble fiber blocks fats that would otherwise be digested and absorbed.
- Feeding healthy gut bacteria: Some soluble fiber-rich foods feed gut bacteria, as they are fermentable in the colon, and so they help the bacteria thrive longer.
- Lowering cholesterol: Soluble fiber prevents some dietary cholesterol from being broken down and absorbed. Over time, soluble fiber can help lower cholesterol levels or the amount of free cholesterol in the blood.
- Stabilizing blood sugar (glucose) levels: Soluble fiber slows down the digestion rate of other nutrients, including carbohydrates, making blood sugar spikes less likely.
- Reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease: By lowering cholesterol levels, stabilizing blood sugars, and decreasing fat absorption, regularly eating soluble fiber may reduce the risk of heart disease and circulatory conditions.
Insoluble Fiber
Insoluble fiber aids digestion and adds roughage to stool. This may help by:
- Preventing constipation: Insoluble fiber draws fluid into the gut and sticks to other byproducts of digestion that are ready to be formed into the stool. Its presence speeds up the movement and processing of waste, helping prevent gastrointestinal blockage and constipationor reduced bowel movements.
- Lowering the risk of diverticular disease: By preventing constipation and intestinal blockages, insoluble fiber helps reduce the risk of developing small folds and hemorrhoids in the colon. It may also reduce the risk of colorectal cancer.
Sources of Fiber
In the United States, more than 90% of women and 97% of men do not meet their daily recommended fiber intake.
Prioritizing whole fruits, vegetables, and whole grains can help people increase their fiber intake. Common foods that are good sources of fiber include:
- Apples
- Beans and legumes such as lentils, soybeans, and pinto beans
- Artichokes
- Potatoes, parsnips, and other root vegetables
- Oranges
- Pears
- Bananas
- Raspberries, blackberries, and other berries
- Bulgur, freekeh, and other grains
- Chia and pumpkin seeds
Although, a healthful diet contains a mix of both soluble and insoluble fiber. However, soluble fibers are more common in beans, peas, oats, barley, apples, and citrus fruits. Good sources of insoluble fiber include beans, whole wheat or bran products, green beans, potatoes, cauliflowers, and nuts.
In addition, while many fiber supplements exist, most do not contain the additional vitamins and minerals, including B vitamins and iron, found in fiber-rich foods. Supplements may also not be as easily or fully absorbed by the body.
Getting Enough Fiber
Keeping some simple rules in mind when shopping or preparing meals is helpful.
Following are some good tips for increasing fiber intake:
- Adding beans, peas, and lentils to soups and salads
- Picking whole fruits and vegetables rather than juices.
- Choosing foods naturally rich in fiber over supplements.
- Picking products that have whole grains close to the start of their ingredients list.
- Consuming fruits and vegetables with their skins or peels intact when possible.
- Picking unrefined grain and cereal products to include regularly in a diet.
- Adding more beans, peas, or lentils than meat, or make them the main ingredient when preparing pasta dishes, casseroles, or stir-fry.
- Making dips or spreads out of chickpeas, beans, peas, lentils, and other pulses.
- Eating unsalted nuts, seeds, or dried fruits as snacks, or sprinkling them over cereals, salads, or yogurt.
- Starting the day with whole grain breakfast options, especially 100 percent ready-to-eat bran.
- Picking brown rice above the white variety.
How does fiber prevent weight gain?
In fact, by promoting the growth of gut bacteria, dietary fiber could prevent obesity, metabolic syndrome, and unwanted changes in the intestine, according to a study from Georgia State University.
Also, obesity is linked with metabolic syndrome, a cluster of conditions that include hypertension, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal triglyceride or cholesterol levels.
Although, as obesity rates continue to soar, understanding how these conditions work together and what can be done to prevent them is more pressing than ever.
Accordingly, metabolic syndrome is now considered to be a chronic inflammatory disease, involving altered relationships between gut bacteria and the gut.
In addition, western society has experienced a huge shift in eating habits in recent decades; there is now a much greater emphasis on processed foods, which, notably, lack fiber. Moreover, this has had an impact on gut bacteria and, according to some, could help explain the increased prevalence of metabolic syndrome.
Furthermore, a diet lacking fiber alters the composition of gut bacteria, lowering numbers overall and changing the ratios of species. Also, low-fiber diets increase bacteria’s ability to encroach upon the gut’s epithelial cells; this provokes an inflammatory response.
Reduced Fiber, altered gut
A paper, published recently in the journal Cell Host and Microbe, explores the relationship between obesity, gut bacteria, inflammation, and fiber intake in new detail.
Although, earlier studies have shown that supplements of a fermentable fiber — inulin — reduce fat buildup and the symptoms of metabolic syndrome. However, consuming enough inulin comes with negative consequences, such as flatulence and bloating.
Fiber’s role in the gut and beyond
Researchers fed mice with one of two diets, both of which were high in fat and known to induce obesity in rodents:
- Low fiber content (5 percent cellulose as a source of fiber)
- High fiber (either inulin or insoluble cellulose)
As expected, after a 4-week period, the mice fed the diet enriched with inulin showed reduced obesity and a reduction in the size of fat cells; the inulin-fed mice also had lower cholesterol and lower incidence of abnormal blood sugar levels (dysglycemia).
Mice fed cellulose, however, only showed slight reductions in obesity and dysglycemia.
The positive effects seen in the inulin-fed mice were due to a number of factors: gut bacteria levels were restored, there was an increase in the production of intestinal epithelial cells, and expression of the protein interleukin-22 (IL-22) was restored.
Biospecimens
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Types of Biospecimens
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