It's the Fiber, Stupid!
By
Jeff
Leach
Despite the “eat more fiber”
campaign sweeping across the nutritional landscape of America, a person
living today will likely eat less fiber than at any other time in human
history. Why?
In 1900, the average American
received more than 30% of daily calories from fiber-rich whole-grain
products. Today that number is less than 1%. We eat less fiber-rich
vegetables and fruits than did our grandparents and our low dietary intake
of fiber has been fingered in just about every modern disease of
“affluence” known to science, and probably a few others we have not
wrapped our arms around yet.
So why don’t Americans eat
more fiber? Never mind what fiber is or how it actually works to make us
healthier – we want more of it in our diet! At least that’s what we tell
the nice people conducting nutritional surveys when they call. Yet, we eat
less than half of the 25 to 35 grams a day the government says we should
eat – and for many of us, those numbers keep dropping. The well-intended
health message currently associated with fiber is simply not working –
time to change the message. If consumers actually knew what fiber was
really for, they would eat a lot more of it. We would all be healthier,
live longer and more active lives, and would save a bundle of money on
health care to boot. And here it is.
Fiber is not food for us, its
food for bacteria. As you read this, there are trillions of live bacteria
feeding off the remains (fiber) of your last meal – mainly in the last
five feet of your gastrointestinal tract – the colon. Humans have evolved
with a complex population (500 plus species and counting) of bacteria that
feed off the fiber we send down the pipe every day. In fact, the bacteria
represent about 90-95% of all the cells in our body. Taken literally then,
we are 20 times more microbe than mammal. Think about that for a minute.
The bacteria have been with us
every minute of every day from the moment we were born – and will be so
until we die. The problem is, our current low fiber diet is literally
starving the bacteria and disrupting the delicate balance between us and
our evolutionary hitchhikers. This is not good.
Fiber is technically any food
item that cannot be broken down by enzymes in the small intestine, and
thus is transferred to the colon – end of the line. Food manufacturers
currently use over 100 different ‘fiber’ substances in foods. Once in the
colon, the bacteria go to work and breakdown the fiber by a process known
as fermentation – and this is where it gets interesting.
I doubt many of you reading
this are aware that up to 70% (dry weight) of the last stool you passed
is made up of live and kicking bacteria. Look next time if you don’t
believe me! You will need to borrow your neighbor’s scanning electron
microscope to see them, however. We also excrete our body weight in these
bacteria each year in our feces. The bacteria serve as the first and last
line of defense against invading pathogens – think Salmonella. A healthy
and growing (read well-fed) population of good bacteria makes your colon
more acidic and thus less inviting to invading pathogens. In sufficient
numbers, the good bacteria out-compete the invaders for food making it
difficult for the pathogen to grow in sufficient numbers to make you sick
The soft, bulky and more
frequent stools many folks associate with fiber consumption is in fact
evidence of a growing and thriving population of bacteria in your colon.
Remember, you poop bacteria. A further sign of a healthy, well-fed,
population of bacteria in your colon can be measured by the frequency of
your flatulents. Though considered anti-social in some circles, breaking
wind ten or more times a day is a sign of a fiber-rich diet, as the
bacteria produce gases as a byproduct of fermenting fiber.
While bulky stools and gas are
indicators of a healthy fiber-rich diet, they are not the most important
reason you should eat more fiber. An additional byproduct of the
fermentation, like the gases, are little compounds known as short chain
fatty acids – SCFA for short. These are important compounds only produced
by well-fed bacteria. SCFAs are absorbed by the body and serve as energy
for the liver, skeletal muscle, brain, and importantly, your colon.
The acidic and SCFA-rich
environment created by the well-fed bacteria not only protects you from
getting sick and providing energy, it also dramatically increases your
bodies ability to absorb calcium, thus reducing your risk to osteoporosis,
and decreases your bad cholesterol, reducing your risk to coronary heart
disease. Further, this bacterial induced environment has positive effects
on biomarkers of colon cancer, reduces symptoms of inflammatory bowel
disease, and counteracts fat mass development. And the list goes on.
So there you have it. Fiber is food for bacteria that will, if you fed
them, protect you from invading pathogens and reduce your risk to a number
of ailments and disease. Ignore them, as we have been, and we will
continue to be the unhealthiest people on the planet. You might think
about eating some fiber today.
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