Getting rough with roughage

My dear old grandmother (who lived to the ripe old age of 94) often impressed on her grandchildren the importance of “roughage”. My Nanna had a been a nurse in her younger days before marrying my Grandfather Norman and heading off to far off places for adventure. She learnt many things from watching sick people get better, (and well people getting sick!) and one of the most important was that none of us eat enough fibre.

My Nanna believed that an adequate fibre intake kept one “regular” and that this was very, very important. She spent a great deal of her life making sure she was regular, and that we were too.

Turns out she was dead right. Fibre is what makes sure we can “open our bowels comfortably and regularly” (her words, not mine!). What she didn’t know was that fibre contributes far more to the healthy function of our bodies. While we have always known that fibre was important, it’s only just being revealed just how important. So important, in fact, that it’s now considered to be a macronutrient along with carbohydrates, protein, fat and water.

Macronutrients are nutrients that the body uses in relatively large amounts and must receive regularly for proper health. Protein and carbs get the lion’s share of publicity (and most of it essentially incorrect!). Fats sit in the “do not discuss or eat” category (so we’re going to discuss them soon, okay?) and poor old fibre gets ignored.

Not any longer. If the only thing you do after you’ve been involved with TINAD (This is Not a Diet) is to increase your fibre consumption, we will have succeeded in making you much, much healthier – and more than likely you’ll have lost weight (which is contributes to that increase in health).

The truth is, eating fibre delivers huge health benefits, not the least of them being that you’ll lose weight. But just to be clear here – we are NOT talking about taking a processed form of fibre, such as metamusil. We are talking about increasing your fibre intake by eating real food. Yummy stuff like salad and fresh vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, legumes, pulses and cereals.

According to one study, people who changed their daily diet to include at least 30 grams of fibre a day lost a significant amount of weight. The study (in the Annals of Internal Medicine) found the group lost nearly as much as a group put on a much more complex diet that required limiting calories, fat, sugar and salt and upping fruit, veggie and whole-grain consumption.

And how can that be, you ask? Fibre-rich foods fill you up faster and keep you satisfied longer and they prevent your body from absorbing some of the calories in the foods you eat.

Scientifically fibre binds with fat and sugar in the digestive tract, carrying some of those calories with it through to the colon, reducing the number of calories that get released to head for the hips and belly.

Fibre is nutrient dense and calorie light. If we eat the recommended amount of fibre – which is around 35g to 40g a day – that can lead to several kilos of lost weight a year.

Losing weight is one established way to better health because it reduced our risk of several diseases, including diabetes, heart disease, liver and kidney diseases and more.

A recent scientific study found that the people who ate the most fibre have a much lower chance of getting diabetes. The fibre helps two ways: by keeping blood sugar levels steady, and keeping you at a healthy weight. Similarly fibre soaks up excess cholesterol and carries it out of the body before it can clog up your arteries.

The newest big news about fibre is the role it plays in nourishing and balancing our microbiome, the good bugs that live really low down in your colon and play a huge role in your body’s ability to stave off inflammation and infection.

Fibre is the key to a healthy gut! A lot of gastrointestinal problems can stem from not having the right level of good bacteria in your digestive tract. That’s right — there is such a thing as good and bad bacteria! These good bacteria – what are referred to gut “flora” or “microbiota” - helps with a huge array of biological tasks. Gut health is a hot topic in the health world these days, and prebiotics and probiotics seem to be at the centre of the discussion. But even though you’ve probably heard these terms a million times, you might not know what role they each play in maintaining a happy gut. Essentially you don’t get these things from a jar. You get them from the food you eat! Probiotics are living strains of bacteria that add to the population of good bacteria in your digestive system and prebiotics are plant fibre that acts as food for the good bacteria. Your microbiome weighs about three kilos and contains trillions of bacteria (as well as viruses and other interesting bugs).

Sugar, fats, dairy and meat feeds the bad bacteria. High fibre foods (prebiotics) are food for the good bacteria.

The greater variety of fibre sources we eat, the more diverse our gut microbiome – which is what we’re aiming for, particularly if we have auto-immune issues or digestion problems. Diets low in fibre-rich plant foods and high in saturated fat and animal foods cause negative changes in gut bacteria that increase intestinal inflammation and may increase the risk of diseases such as colon cancer. Alcohol can also have a negative effect on gut bacteria.

Most Australians don’t eat enough fibre!

Now for the really interesting scientific stuff - As your gut bacteria gobble up the fibre that has fermented in your gastro-intestinal tract, they produce something called short-chain fatty acids, which are crucially important in lowering systemic inflammation, which has been linked to obesity and nearly every major chronic health problem.

If you want more evidence that you should give up orange juice and taking up eating oranges (ditto for ALL fruit juices!) there’s evidence that every 10 grams of fibre you eat is associated with a 10 percent reduced risk of colorectal cancer and a 5 percent fall in breast cancer risk (study published in the Annals of Oncology).

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health recently found that people who often ate fiber-rich cereals and whole grains had a 19 and 17 percent, respectively, reduced risk of death-from any cause-compared to those who noshed on less fiber-heavy fare.

So, if you think your body needs a “detox” – don’t head for the fruit juice. (Really, please don’t!). Head to the fruit and vege shop. Buy dozens of types of fruits and vegetables and eat them all. The fibre will give your insides a good “scrubbing” and actually eliminate toxins from your GI tract. Fun fact: Water, fruit and vegetables, together with nuts, seeds, legumes, pulses and cereals, are the only things that actually will detox your body!

And one last thing… some fibre-containing plants are really important in ensuring the bioavailability of minerals like calcium in the foods you eat, which may help maintain bone density. So eat silverbeet and spinach – they’re full of calcium and the fibre makes our bodies get the calcium to our bones!