A diet rich in fiber protects us from diseases. We explain which high-fiber foods should be on your menu!
Why is a high-fiber diet good for health?
Dietary fiber has several health-promoting properties. Among other things, they can:
inhibit inflammation
lower cholesterol levels
lower blood pressure
promote the elimination of carcinogenic substances
slow down the absorption of sugar in the intestine by improving the action of insulin, thus reducing the risk of becoming diabetic.
The German Nutrition Society advises 30 grams (g) of total dietary fiber daily. A distinction is made between soluble (e.g., in fruits and vegetables) and insoluble (e.g., in cereals and legumes such as lentils and chickpeas) dietary fibers. However, most Germans don't get to 30 g - on average, we eat only about 22 g per day.
Healthy nutrition: Why do we eat so little dietary fiber?
We eat too little cereals in particular - instead of whole grains, rye and the like, many Germans tend to eat meat, eggs, milk and dairy products as well as quickly digestible carbohydrate sources such as potatoes and light bread. As a result, dietary fiber often falls by the wayside. However, it is not that difficult to implement a high-fiber diet. For example, the DGE recommends the following daily menu with a high fiber content:
1 slice of whole-grain bread (3.9 g)
1 kiwi (2.9 g)
1 apple (2.5 g)
200 g Brussels sprouts (8.8 g)
200 g whole-grain pasta (10.2 g)
½ bell bell pepper (3.6 g)
1 serving of sugar-free muesli with fruit (7.7 g)
How can I tell if there is enough fiber in a food?
The only thing that helps here is to go through the list of ingredients in a product. For cereal products, whole wheat flour should be at the top. But the designations "whole grain" and "from the whole grain" also stand for a lot of dietary fiber. By the way, rye flour contains almost twice as many of the healthy helpers as wheat flour. In addition, a lot of fruit and vegetables should be eaten.
A high-fiber diet can influence digestion
Some people tolerate dietary fiber poorly or not at all. This is because many indigestible components of dietary fiber are broken down by bacteria in the large intestine - this creates gases in the body that can lead to the following phenomena:
Flatulence
constipation
Feeling of fullness
To prevent this and support digestion, it is important to drink plenty of water (at least two liters a day), as well as to chew slowly and well.
Study: Dietary fiber is so healthy
A study by the U.S. National Institute of Health has impressively shown how healthy indigestible plant fibers actually are. Almost 400,000 participants were asked how they ate. And they were asked from the start of the study, not afterwards, as is usually the case in other studies. This gives more reliable results.
After nine years, the researchers took stock: Of the women who consumed a particularly large amount of dietary fiber (26 grams per day), 22 percent fewer had died after this time than in the group of those who ate very little dietary fiber (11 grams per day). The risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases even decreased by 53 percent. However, only indigestible plant fibers from cereals showed this protective effect, not those from fruits and vegetables.
Surprisingly for the researchers, the risk of death from infections fell particularly sharply, by up to 60 percent. "This may be due to a favorable influence of dietary fiber on the bacteria living in the intestine," says Dr. Manuela Bergmann of the German Institute of Human Nutrition (DIfE) in Potsdam. "There is evidence that the composition of the intestinal flora plays an important role for the immune system."