Eating High Fibre
What is it?
Fibre is in the category of complex carbohydrates, but what makes fibre different is that it is not digestible. An INCREDIBLE food source, fibre is only available through plants including vegetables, fruit, grains and legumes.
There are 2 main types of fibre which include:
Soluble Fibre
– dissolves in water and helps fill your stomach to make you feel fuller for longer. It also works with your blood sugar levels stabilising them as it can bind to other substances in your body like sugar, lowering the amount of glucose in your blood stream.
Insoluble Fibre
– cannot dissolve with water. It is more of the type of foods that moves things along. It isn’t absorbed so just helps bulk the rest of the digestive and body wastes to move them out as waste.
Resistant Starch is a specialty
– while it isn’t usually noted as an important fibre type, it is a fibre that is extremely useful for our good gut bacteria and also for overall bowel health .
Why do we need it?
Fibre is one of the MOST important aspects in the diet. The more westernised we have become as a society, with more processed and packaged foods, it means less fibre overall in the diet.
More ingredients are further away from it’s natural source meaning – the MORE refined and processed, the LESS natural fibre the food has as a whole!
Fibre plays a role in our body that we need for optimal digestion and as we know what Hippocrates said ‘All disease begins in the gut’. With that being said, the focus needs to be on the gut becoming healthier and other symptoms may follow suit.
– Helps blood sugar
– Helps blood cholesterol
– Regular bowel movements – prevent toxic build up.
– Satiety
– Optimal digestion
– Feed our probiotics – acts as prebiotics to fuel our probiotics
– Possible preventative factor in diseases including heart disease, diabetes and bowel cancer (Ref. Nutrition Australia)
The amount of fibre we should aim for per day is around 25g per day for females and 30g for males. It is an underacknowledged problem that Australians are not getting enough fibre in their diet. Fibre through vegetables is being missed considerably with over 90% of children and adults not consuming the recommended intake of vegetables. (ABS 2015)
How to up your fibre game?
– Start your day with a fibre hit, not only to help reach your fibre number, but a morning fibre punch will help move those bowels in the morning to clear any waste and prepare your digestion for the day.
– Add veggies to your meals in any way possible. For example grate carrot and add to meatballs or burger patties, spiralise zucchinis and mix in with spaghetti, or add baked sweet potato cooled into your brownie mix.
– Pop into your local farmers market to try out some new fruits and vegetables to vary the sources of fibre you are having.
– Try having a range of whole-grains. If you like having rice as a side to dinner, try switching it up with quinoa, millet or barley. It also keeps it interesting!
– As much as meat gives us plenty of nutrients, having a meat free meal through the week is great for so many reasons. This is where you can get creative adding chickpeas, lentils and beans to your meals for the missing protein and an extra source of fibre.
– Snack on some nuts and seeds.
– Frozen cucumber is great to add to smoothies to bulk it up.
– Snack on vegetables and fruit.
– Start with colourful vegetables as a base and build your meal around that instead of the protein as the main part.
*Written for Healthy Life.
