Stroll through your neighborhood market, and you’ll notice that fiber is turning up in some pretty unlikely places. Sure, you’ll find it in the usual suspects, like 100 percent whole-grain bread, pasta, cereal and brown rice. But it’s also popping up in breakfast bars, yogurt, cottage cheese, soups and even ice cream.
Diets rich in fiber have been linked to lower lousy (LDL) cholesterol, better blood-sugar control and improved digestive health — and they keep you thinner, too. Yet most people have a pretty sorry showing in the roughage department, getting only 10 to 12 grams a day. That’s pocket change compared with the 21 to 25 grams most women and the 30 to 38 grams most guys should be getting. No surprise: Our appetite for processed food has stripped away much of the natural fiber in our diets. When grains like wheat are refined, they not only lose most of their bulk, they also shed more than 50 percent of their B vitamins and 90 percent of their vitamin E. And once their outer layers are stripped away (that’s what happens during refining), they’re also digested much more quickly, causing their sugar to flood the bloodstream and increase the risk of fatty liver disease that promotes inflammation in your body. And that’s only part of the bad side of nonwhole grains.
So food manufacturers want to pick up the slack by enriching their products with fiber. How do they get the stuff where it wasn’t before, without making, say, ice cream chewy? Largely thanks to these ingredients — some of which increase fiber on the label, but also can junk up your arteries, brain or immune system. Here’s what to know about them:
Inulin (aka chicory root extract): Food manufacturers love this one because it doubles as a fiber and a fat replacer. And it’s everywhere — in foods like ice cream, yogurt and breakfast bars. On the upside, inulin is believed to encourage the growth of healthy bacteria in your colon. Trouble is, studies have relied on large amounts of the stuff, and in real life, those quantities can cause digestive discomfort, like bloating and gas. And gas is the good side. The bad side: They gunk up your mitochondria engines (which give you energy). Our suggestion is not to eat food with this.
Gums (such as guar gum, carrageenan and xanthan gum): These fibers often are added to cottage cheese, dairy products and breakfast cereals as thickeners. In large amounts, they may help lower cholesterol and blood sugar. Like inulin, guar gum has been shown to cause tummy troubles. Nice way of putting it, eh? In one study that examined its effect on weight loss, not only did people not lose weight, but 3 percent of the participants dropped out due to GI distress. That means despite being paid to have it, they couldn’t stomach it. Boo.
Cellulose: Found in plant cell walls, cellulose adds bulk to foods and can help keep things running smoothly in the digestive department. You’ll find it in low-carb tortillas and double-fiber breads. This one’s OK with us!
So your first choice for fiber is to always go with the real stuff. We’re talking fruits, vegetables, beans and whole grains, or ingredients such as whole-wheat flour (products you choose should contain only 100 percent whole wheat), oats, barley, corn, rye, brown rice, kamut, millet and spelt. These should be high up on the ingredient list, not added as an afterthought. In other words, brown rice is always going to be a better choice than fiber-fortified ice cream (sorry).
Why? Because it’s not clear whether the health perks of a high-fiber diet are courtesy of the fiber itself or of the nutrients it travels with (or both). See, foods that are naturally high in fiber also deliver a perfect package of vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals that you won’t get from fiber that’s added to foods. Just recently, a National Cancer Institute Study found that whole grains — that’s the whole package — but not fiber alone help fend off colon cancer. So for many reasons, make whole foods your go-to foods.
The YOU Docs, Mehmet Oz and Mike Roizen, are authors of “YOU: On a Diet.” To submit questions, visit realage.com.
