Food for the Grist Mill

We have been obsessed with bowel habits since before we were a country. Our health was determined by looking into chamber pots as if reading tea leaves: length, width, consistency, and timing all made up a general assessment of what was going on inside.

How rudimentary!

Today, we have the same obsession held most closely by people I will call the Fiber Police—people who are positively adamant that we eat enough fibrous foods to make up a total of 35 grams per day, both soluble and insoluble.

What if you’re wheat and gluten intolerant, as many people are, and cannot eat the whole grain breads and bran-filled cereals that compose the foods containing the most fiber available? Then they tell you to take fiber supplements containing wheat grass and other things an allergic person cannot consume.

With 1 slice of bread containing 1 gram of fiber on average, you’d have to eat whole loaves of bread daily, or bowls of bran cereal at a time to achieve this magic number of 35 grams daily. I thought this was absurd, especially for someone with my food allergies. Surely I’m not going to die because I can’t eat these things…right?

I’m not going to die—I looked it up on Google. First of all, there is a lot of argument for and against that much fiber, and much argument as to what composes soluble and insoluble fiber sources. I wanted to know if grains were necessary at all to achieve some sort of good bowel health, what type of fiber they represent, and if it was really necessary to have both types of fiber in your diet.

Well, since I couldn’t find a definitive answer as to what foods specifically made up each type of fiber, I used this for an answer: if I go every day, I’m fine. The biggest scare from not getting adequate fiber seems to stem from getting backed up, constipated, diverticulotic (see “diverticulosis”), and brewing a good case of bowel cancer as a result.

Here’s the story of fiber, how your body uses it, and what role grains play in it: foods with fiber in them are either digested and turned to water (soluble) or not (insoluble), then go on to either coat your lower intestine (soluble) or sweep out your lower intestine like a broom (insoluble), adding bulk to your bowel movements. Individual doctor websites will tell you that the sweeping action from eating the grains that make up insoluble fiber will do more harm than good, as they act to minutely injure your colon through scraping and immediately putting bacteria and waste into the injury site. This makes perfect sense to me—if you wound yourself, the last thing you want to do is rub fecal matter into it!

Soluble fiber, on the other hand, serves to coat your lower intestine, preventing injury from the sweeping action of “grain brooms”. It also serves to prevent fecal matter from festering, infecting the surrounding tissue, and scraping as it leaves the body.

So what kind of fiber do we really need in our bodies? Well, the widely-held hypothesis is that we need both kinds, and it can be had without stuffing yourself with bran cereals and entire loaves of whole-grain breads.

Certain vegetables of the woody, stringy kind can provide that same type of fiber found in grains, which is good for people like me. Raw celery, broccoli stems, onions (for their rings), mustard greens, collard greens, and other raw plant material will provide me with the insoluble fiber I’m still questioning my need for. In other words, my salads have been fitting the bill for both kinds of fiber, and I didn’t even know it!

Beans and legumes are another source, so instead of stuffing yourself with bread, why not try Mexican food instead? I’d say it was a whole lot more appealing than fiber supplements—just pass on the cheese, and use raw red onion and pinto, kidney, or black soy beans when making your dish. The best part is that only ½ cup of beans makes a serving, and most of us eat more than that per Mexican meal.

I have discovered that there is no need to become a horse or cow to achieve fiber continuity. Now I have to figure out exactly how many grams DOES make me go regularly, because I know I don’t get anywhere near 35 grams of fiber daily—another bone of contention from my corner of the universe.

Who makes up these hopelessly absurd numbers and waves them around as fact and health dogma? Why, the grain industry, of course! It seems as if the medical community just sits and waits for the fax to ring or the e-mail to alert them —no longer doing any actual research or verification themselves. Nutritional benchmarks set by various food industry factions—how convenient! Now you have a better idea of how the Food Guide Pyramid got invented in the first place.

Something else not taken into account: not all of us eat the so-called “typical American diet.” Some of us eat tons of raw fruits and veggies with each meal, and have homemade tacos once or twice weekly. Some of us shun drive-thru windows and restaurant eating all together like it was plague-infested or something. Some of us actually care about what we put into our bodies.

All I know is my magic fiber number is about half the touted 35 grams, and I go just fine at about the same times daily—all without a single bowl of cereal, or a single piece of whole-grain bread.

I’ll leave you with another bone of contention: if we need at least 1200 calories for a starvation diet, what do people with lap bands and gastric bypass operations do? They can only eat tablespoons of food per day before they get full enough to throw up. Oprah, Mike Huckabee, Ted Kennedy, Star Jones-Reynolds, Al Sharpton, Chris Matthews, and other obviously surgically-assisted weight losers seem to still be alive and thriving on their “tablespoon diet.” Tell ME they get 1800 calories and 35 grams of fiber daily--they'd have to devote great quantities of their day doing nothing but eating like birds!

I'm imagining they don't even own a normal-size refrigerator--why would they need one for the amount of food they can now consume? Wouldn't a dorm room-sized one or a hotel room-type bar fridge do for them?