Health Benefits of a High Fibre Diet

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Healthy Eating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Why opt for a high fibre diet ?

Fibre is a very key component to any healthy eating plan and or diet, also known in language terms as “roughage” it is responsible for general overall health, without fibre in your diet you may end up with poor digestion, stomach problems, and other ailments.

Fibre is a carbohydrate which we are unable to break down quickly in our stomachs, this serves the purpose of pushing food more quickly through our digestive tract and eliminating waste far more effectively.

Otherwise undigested food can reside in your stomach and will just sit and rot inside your stomach releasing toxins into your body.

How it helps to lose weight

This type of food takes longer to chew in your mouth so you won’t eat as much, when fibre reaches your stomach it acts like a sponge soaking up water, also it takes longer to break down than most other foods, this will give you a feeling of satisfaction and fullness, for a longer period of time this will help conquer cravings. A lot of fibre contains very few calories.

What are the health benefits ?

Because of the very effective elimination characteristics of it, it can help prevent such diseases as bowel cancer, piles, stop constipation which quite a lot of people suffer with, improve overall digestion, in less civilised countries where their diets are high in fibre they tend to have less diseases than their western counterparts have.

Fibre tends to be very low in fat but can help prevent cardiovascular disease which is brought on by hardening of the arteries when fat consumption is high in your diet. Fibre tends to be a good source of vitamins and minerals which is essential for correct body functioning, and also helps prevent cravings.

The best sources of fibre are ?

Wholegrain foods such as wholegrain breads ones that tend to have about four to 5 g per slice is ideal, others include muesli, Weetabix, Shredded wheat, baked beans, wholemeal pasta, Brown rice, porridge or oatmeal as its otherwise known as, dried fruits, nuts.

Best vegetable sources are:

Asparagus

Broccoli

Turnips

Jacket potato with skin

Sweet potatoes

Greenpeas

Carrots

Cauliflower

And spinach

Best fruit sources are:

Apples

Bananas

Blueberries

Pears

Strawberries

Raisins

And oranges

How much am I supposed to eat ?

The recommended guidelines are that you’re supposed to eat between 10 to 25 g of fibre per day I dare say that most of us don’t come anywhere near this figure, just recently in a tabloid newspaper it was quoted that Britons still don’t eat enough fruit and vegetables in their diet.

Studies around fibre

Fibre can be very good for your heart several studies in various countries have shown that eating a high fibre diet is a significant player, in lowering bad cholesterol the sort of fibre known as the soluble type has cholesterol-lowering properties.

The particular countries where the studies were done, their rate of coronary heart disease was a lot lower than those countries who ate less fibre.

The two types of fibre

The two types of fibre are insoluble and soluble soluble fibre tends to bind itself to cholesterol molecules and flushes it out of your body if there is any present think of it as a sponge soaking up all the bad cholesterol in your body.

Insoluble fibre on the other hand serves a different purpose this is purely for pushing food through your body very quickly, and keeping your digestive system functioning correctly this will help and stop problems, such as stomach cancers, bowel cancers and also stop you from being constipated as well.

Are there any problems with a high fibre diet ?

Not really know although some people do say that when they changeover to a higher fibre diet it can cause them to suffer from flatulence, but based on mine and a lot of other people’s experiences, this tends to be a short-term thing rather than rather than a long-term thing. So as we can see there are more pros and hardly any cons to having a nutritious high fibre diet.

So get eating those high fibre fruit and vegetables.

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