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The food industry has lately been having a “high-fiber diet” fad.  If you have shopped at a grocery store at all lately, you’ll find it added into many products.  High fiber orange juice, high fiber granola bars, high fiber noodles, high fiber cereals, and the list keeps growing! Much of this started a few years ago when the Atkins Diet was popular, and food manufacturers were looking for ways to keep down their carbohydrate counts. Adding fiber was a great way to “reduce” the number of carbs in a food, because it supposedly helped to balance blood sugar.

I highly, HIGHLY promote a high-fiber diet.  In fact, the suggested daily intake for fiber is 25-40 grams per day, and I often encourage my clients to find that sweet spot that has them feeling regular (as in 1-2 easy bowel movements per day).  Depending on how you’re built, you may need more or less than 30 grams per day.

However, I do NOT promote eating food that has a whole bunch of added nutrients to them.  Nutrients work together when they’re packaged into a whole food.  They may not work at all when they’re added in. That’s why I always recommend a whole foods vitamin, like Prograde’s VGF-25+, rather than a synthetic vitamin like Centrum.

This is the case with many of these new “high-fiber” foods.  Orange juice without the pulp does not contain fiber, so that means for high-fiber orange juice, it had to be added back in.  How do food manufacturers do this?  By using “functional” fiber: inulin, chicory root extract, fructans, and oligosaccharides.  Inulin is found naturally in chicory root, onions, and garlic, and when it is eaten in those forms, doesn’t usually cause a problem for a lot of people unless it’s eaten in large amounts.  When taken out of its native form, however, and added into foods, it can cause some dietary distress (meaning gas, constipation, indigestion, and the like). Why? Because it’s no longer able to work synergistically with other parts of that food. (Please note that I did not include psyllium fiber in that list above- that is because it is a natural fiber, and isn’t generally used by food manufacturers to add fiber.  You can find psyllium fiber in Metamucil.)

So, how are we to get in our daily intake of fiber without using added fibers? The best way is through vegetables.  You can eat quite a bit of veggies before you hit your calorie limits, and most vegetables have 2 or more grams of fiber per serving.  Two cups of Romaine lettuce, for instance, has 2 grams of fiber. Broccoli has 2 grams in one cup. Beans have one of the best fiber quantities in the world, at 6-8 grams per half cup (hence the song, “beans, beans, the magical fruit”).

And if you don’t have problems with grains, whole wheat and rolled oatmeal are incredibly good sources of fiber.

The next question then becomes, what would a day with 35 grams of fiber look like?

It’s easy, actually.  Here’s an example menu:

Breakfast

• 2 eggs, cooked with 1/4 cup onion
• 1 cup cooked oatmeal with 1 tsp honey to sweeten

Mid-morning Snack

• 1 medium sized apple
• 2 tablespoons peanut butter

(Right now, you’re at 10 grams of fiber, and you haven’t even had lunch yet!)

Lunch

• 2 cups romaine lettuce
• 4 oz chicken breast spiced with chili powder, basil, black pepper
• 1/2 cup salsa
• 1 peach

Mid-afternoon Snack

• 1 oz almonds
• 10 baby carrots

Dinner

• 4 oz Ground beef, extra lean (or other meat, such as pork loin, chicken, sirloin, or fish)
• 1 cup broccoli, steamed
• 1 cup cauliflower, steamed
• 1 cup black beans (or navy beans, kidney beans, or other bean)

This day has 35 grams of fiber and approximately 1600 calories. If you wanted to increase the carbohydrate intake, adding fruit, rice, a potato, or a slice of whole wheat bread would do the trick!

*Calories calculated using Fitday.com.

*Caveat: If you have not had a high daily intake of fiber, do not increase your fiber intake overnight.  Increase in small amounts over time.  Increasing your fiber too quickly can cause constipation.

*Please read my disclosure here regarding Prograde products or starting an exercise or nutrition program.