How important is dietary fibre intake?
Dietary fibre is important for health due to its well-documented benefits, which < include aiding in digestion and regularity, lowering cholesterol levels, and regulating blood sugar levels.
High fibre diets are associated with a lower risk of developing coronary heart disease, stroke, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and certain gastrointestinal diseases, according to extensive research including systematic reviews and meta-analyses published in peer-reviewed journals.
Simian Diet Trial
An interesting dietary trial evaluated aggressive cholesterol lowering, looking at the Simian diet.
3 diets were tested in this study:
- a low fat therapeutic diet
- a starch diet
- a very high vegetable diet.
All 3 diets were similar in calories, protein, and all 3 had similar amounts of saturated fat by energy!
The biggest difference in these diets: the vegetable heavy diet contained 55g fiber per 1000 calories eaten, so in this study where there was an average of 2700 calories eaten, individuals in the vegetable heavy arm were getting almost 150 g fibre daily, and in addition to having no dietary cholesterol, there was also a high amount of phytosterols.
All components of this diet helped reduce LDL 30% from baseline, which is tremendously clinically significant, in just 2 weeks!
Jenkins DJ, Kendall CW, Popovich DG, Vidgen E, Mehling CC, Vuksan V, Ransom TP. Rao AV, Rosenberg-Zand R, Tariq N, Corey P, Jones PJ, Raeini M, Story JA, Furumoto EJ, Illingworth DR, Pappu AS, Connelly PW. Effect of a very-high-fiber vegetable, fruit, and nut diet on serum lipids and colonic function. Metabolism.
2001 Apr; 50 (4):494-503. doi: 10.1053/meta.2001.21037. PMID: 11288049.
