The importance of fiber

Fiber can be one of your best friends when it comes to weight loss and slenderizing the mid-section, but there is a lot more that can be appreciated about fiber beyond its cosmetic effects, such as a cancer reduction risk and many more benefits. The National Cancer Institute found a 22% reduction in cancer if men consumed 30 grams per day and women 25 grams per day.

I like to think of fiber content as a good judge of a food’s character; if the content is too low, (less then 5 grams per serving) the consumer should be aware of potential side effects!  This is primarily for the carbohydrate group of foods and not so much for the protein and fat groups. 

However, even with the protein and fat groups, we should be sure to include plenty of fiber for the purpose of helping move this otherwise waxy glob through our digestive track and to help control our cholesterol. Carbs without fiber is almost like consuming pure sugar and this helps cause diabetes and rapid weight gain.

There are a few important things to understand about fiber and how the two types work that will help us become better judges of our foods. It helped me understand better how the two worked when I knew a primary difference between the two, soluble fiber will dissolve in water and insoluble fiber will not. 

The soluble fiber turns into a sort of gel substance and puts a slight film through our digestive track which slows the absorption of nutrients down, which in turn keeps the flow of nutrients steadier when entering the bloodstream and avoids those spikes and crashes. 

Soluble fiber is the reason we can eat most fruits without worrying about a sugar spike like we do when we eat or drink processed sweets such as, sodas, fruit drinks, sweet tea, candies and deserts, this is also the reason foods rich in soluble fiber are so important to diabetics and ones wanting to avoid diabetes. 

Soluble fiber also has a cholesterol lowering effect! 

The process: we excrete bile from our gall bladder when we eat foods containing fat and this bile helps our digestive track break down these fats. Normally this bile gets reabsorbed and used again, but if we can keep the bile from reabsorbing, it causes the liver to have to make new bile salts, and our liver makes this bile from cholesterol. So eating foods that have a high content of soluble fiber can be your natural cholesterol lowering statin.

Insoluble fiber adds bulk to our foods which helps us realize that we have eaten enough, which in turn avoids that realization about 20 minutes after consumption that we have eaten and drank about 500 calories too many. It also helps break up otherwise big globules of food that can slide into and stick in crevices of our digestive track. 

This insoluble fiber helps massage this old and new food up out of these curves and crevices, helping provide us with a clean digestive track. When our body is absorbing nutrients from our digestive track instead of toxins (from years of built-up residue leaching back into our system) we will see energy levels improve and our defense against chronic disease!

Note: if you eat prior to a period of inactivity, this is an especially important time to only eat foods that have plenty of fiber. Liquid sugar drinks (including fruit juices, sports drinks) are a disaster to attempts at weight loss and are extremely bad for sugar spikes and crashes. Try to have 5 grams of fiber per serving.

Information exercise: do an internet search by entering foods rich in soluble fiber and foods rich in insoluble fiber, copy down these foods on separate lists, then surround yourself with the ones you like on these individual lists and you will be surprised how easy it is to get your daily fiber needs.

Soluble fiber helps us control sugar spikes and cholesterol, insoluble fiber is our food mover and the cleaner of our digestive track!