Boring necessity or faithful friend?

I promised it and here it is: a fibre-themed post. I know, I know, when it comes to nutrition, you can’t get any more boring than fibre. But trust me, like the Transformers, there’s more to fibre than meets the eye. Plus this is a short post, so it's easy to digest.

Digest, geddit?

Ahem. Anyway, I’m not historically a fibre-phile. I hardly ever ate lentils or wholemeal pasta (brown pasta, eurgh). I’ve often been baffled as to how to include veges in the meals I made for the family (the answer: microwave some frozen peas!). And even though I knew that yes, fibre is good for me yada yada, I wasn’t convinced it was as groundbreaking and important as nutritionists would have me believe. So I said, ‘yeah ok’ and then I switched to wholemeal bread. What, that wasn’t enough?

With my new hat on as (very) amateur armchair nutritionist, here’s what I've learned- fibre is a gem when it comes to nutrition and health. But that’s the conclusion, and I have to start at the beginning. Before I start though, I have to warn that once you start reading up about this sort of topic you’ll come across some definitely undelicious sounding words, like ‘gastric emptying’, and ‘fermentation in the intestine’. I’ll try to keep these at a minimum in my short-cut explanation of things below. Excuse me if I go too far in the other direction and refer to your ‘tummy tum’. I have a one year old at home so it’s hard to judge sometimes.

Firstly, fibre comes in soluble and insoluble forms, and they don’t have the same effect on the body. Insoluble fibre adds bulk to what you eat, which fills your stomach up quickly, making you feel physically full (I’ve explained more about fullness in my previous post). Insoluble fibre also speeds the movement of food through the digestive system. It’s the fibre that you associate with, um, number twos. It’s the fibre that Darren Hinch wanted us to try in the All Bran challenge.

Soluble fibre is the fibre that is...soluble. Well, technically it absorbs water rather than being ‘dissolved’ in it, and it becomes viscous –gooey or gummy according to my thesaurus, yuck – and this not only helps add a physical feeling of fullness to your tum, but also slows the digestive process, meaning that your stomach doesn’t get empty quickly. (Yep, I mean gastric emptying is delayed- gross!).

But other than slowing things down, digestion-wise, soluble fibre seems to be the good fairy of many body processes which affect our health. It slows the absorption of glucose, which means that you don’t get a sudden blood sugar spike from eating carbohydrates if you also eat soluble fibre. It lowers cholesterol and does good things to your intestines. Things you probably don’t want to know about, but which you should be grateful for all the same. New research suggests that fibre plays a positive role in your immune system, somehow changing inflamed immune cells into anti-inflammatory, healing cells. So instead of being sick little cell-patients, they have been inspired by fibre to become  tiny cell-doctors. How cute. (I'm glad it doesn't take them 7 years of training though. But then, I wouldn't want under-qualified cells running around my immune system either). Well anyway, here’s the news report version of this study which is far more understandable than the original research article.

In other words, eat more soluble fibre, you won’t regret it.

If you look for fibre on the nutrition information panels of foods, you will notice that soluble and insoluble fibres are lumped together under ‘dietary fibre’. This is because the dietary reference intake for fibre (25-30 grams per day) is for both types combined. On the one hand, this makes sense because many foods that are high in fibre include both insoluble and soluble, so you may as well count both together. On the other hand, lots of foods that I think of as ‘high fibre’ are biased toward one type of fibre, with hardly any of the other. If you are eating wholemeal bread to increase your fibre intake, you are increasing your insoluble fibre intake, and getting very little soluble (0.08 grams per slice). An apple has both, but more soluble (2.3 grams) than insoluble (1.6 grams). If you’re interested, here’s a website with a handy breakdown of the soluble and insoluble fibres in different types of food. Thanks internet! 

So, fibre. I’m sorry I ignored you. You seemed boring, but you are not. Let’s be friends.

I’m off to Tasmania tomorrow. The Apple Isle- how appropriate! Also home of Lactos, wondrous purveyors of delicious cheese. Oh and also family. Point is, I won’t be blogging for a few days :)