Date: 20 Aug 1994 07:43:05 -0700 From: taltar@vertigo.helix.net (Ted Altar) Subject: Quote on Fiber (repost) Newsgroups: rec.food.veg Organization: Helix Internet Lines: 103 The following passage comes from Dr. Dennis Burkitt (1982), one of the key researchers who has helped to bring to the attention of modern medicine and nutrition the importance of dietary fiber. Again, it makes the key point, worth repeating, that *whole* plant foods are essential for health and maintaining one's ideal body mass. FIBER AS A CONTROL ON ENERGY INTAKE AND OBESITY Communities subsisting mainly on plant food, while retaining their natural complement of fiber, seldom have an obesity problem even when there is no scarcity of food. Haber and his colleagues (1977) fed volunteers the same quantity of apples in three different forms. Apples in their natural state, retaining both their normal structure and their fiber; apple puree, with the structure destroy but the fiber retained; and apple juice with the fiber removed. All had the same energy value. The first took the longest to eat and gave the greatest sense of satiety. The juice was swallowed quickly and was the least satisfying of hunger, and the puree was intermediate between the other two. This, together with epidemiological evidence and the weight-reducing effect of fiber-rich carbohydrate foods, suggest that foods with a low energy/satiety ratio are protective against the development of obesity. This does not imply that addition of fiber to fiber-depleted diets has the same effect. The reduction in fat-rich foods, which is the almost inevitable result of consuming a diet based predominantly on fiber-rich starch foods, and a reduction of sugar, which is totally fiber-depleted, are important components of a weight-reducing diet. SOURCES OF FIBER Southgate et al (1976) have estimated the dietary fiber content of the different categories of plant foods. Fruits and leaf vegetables have a low content, probably never exceeding 3%, largely because they are mostly composed of water. Root vegetables or tubers, such as potatoes, carrots, and parsnips, have more fiber per weight, but this seldom exceeds 7%. Legumes or pulses, the families of beans and peas, have rather more fiber, but the richest source is found in cereals, wholemeal bread and breakfast cereals hiving the highest fiber content. Miller's bran, which cannot be classified as a food, is the richest source of all, containing 26% by wight dietary fiber. Not only do cereals have a higher content of fiber than do other plant foods, but they are particularly rich in the pentose fraction which is the most effective in combating constipation. Although wholemeal bread has only about 2.5 times as much dietary fiber as does white bread, it has 8 times the effect in increasing stool volume because of its higher pentose content. TOTAL EFFECT GREATER THAN COMBINED EFFECT OF COMPONENTS It must be emphasized that the total function of fiber is much more than the sum of the fractions of its individual components. It is involved in a multitude of interrelations and activities, both physical and chemical. If a clock is dismantled, various wheels can be shown to engage with one another, but the sum total of this knowledge doesn't enable one to tell the time. The addition of fiber to a fiber-depleted diet is beneficial in counteracting constipation and thus avoiding its various consequences. It is, however, no more than a compromise and is not an adequate substitute for foods from which the fiber has not been removed in the first place. [from Dr. Denis Burkitt, "Dietary fiber as a protection against disease". In Jelliffe & Jelliffe (ed.), ADVERSE EFFECTS OF FOODS, 1982] With respect to constipation, among other things this can quickly result in symptoms of malaise, nausea, mental sluggishness, headaches and restlessness. This was nicely demonstrated by a somewhat "arresting" experiment in which these symptoms quickly occurred in a group of hapless volunteers who had their rectums packed with cotten! Ouch! When the cotton packing was removed from these brave souls of medical research, the symptoms mentioned above all disappeared. (see Walter Alverz, "Intestinal Autointoxication", PHYSIOLOGICAL REVIEWS, 1924, 4:352.) Cheers, ted