Fibre plays many roles in optimising the health of your body, from helping remove waste products from your body to promoting and maintain a healthy body weight. Talking about toilet habits may not seem civilised but it is an important part of your health. Your body needs to excrete waste products regularly to keep your guts healthy and helps to reduce your risk of unwanted medical conditions. By including enough fibre each day, you are giving your body the ability to work well to be able to produce healthy stools and prevent uncomfortable conditions like constipation.
Two types of soluble, prebiotic fibres from a group of fructans called inulin and fructooligosaccharides (FOS) give food for the good microbes living in your gut. When these bacteria eat the fibre, they create short chain fatty acids. These short chain fatty acids absorb salt and fluid in your gut which makes your stool a healthy consistency for moving and passing through your body. By including more of these types of fibre in your diet the amount of healthy gut microbes increases and as a result increases the amount of short chain fatty acids being produced.
Short chain fatty acids produced when inulin and FOS is eaten by the healthy gut microbes promotes the smooth muscle in your bowels to function optimally and increases their motility. A meta-analysis and systematic review which is a strong level of evidence found that those people who included more inulin and FOS in their diet had an additional 1.6 bowel movements each week compared to those with low amounts of fructans in their diet.
Good sources of inulin include onion, chicory roots, garlic, asparagus, and barley grains. Good sources of GOS include lentils, beans, and peas.
Resistant starch is a type of starch your body cannot digest. The average Australian consumed 3-9g of resistant starch each day. The goal for optimal gut health and function is 15-20g. Good sources of resistant starch include green bananas, cooked and cooled rice and pasta, beans, peas and lentils and wholegrains like oats. The benefits of resistant starch include:
- Promote an optimal gut microbiome to be more of the healthy varieties.
- Resistant starch is fermented by your gut microbiome and produce short chain fatty acids. These short chain fatty acids have many health effects on your body.
- Resistant starch can allow the hormone insulin to work better. Insulin is needed to take sugar out of your blood stream into the cells of your body.
- Promotes a healthy body weight by increasing your ‘fullness’ hormones leptin, peptide YY, and GLP-1.
More than 70% of Australian adults and more than 50% of Australian children are not meeting their daily fibre needs for health and gut function. By including a diverse range of different plant foods each day, you are likely to meet your needs. For optimal gut health and function aim for 30 different plant foods each week.
Take home message: By including enough fibre each day, you will feel better, promote overall body wellness, and allow your gut will be able to work at its best.
Reference:
- de Vries J, Le Bourgot C, Calame W, Respondek F. Effects of β-Fructans Fiber on Bowel Function: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Nutrients. 2019 Jan 4;11(1):91. doi: 10.3390/nu11010091. PMID: 30621208; PMCID: PMC6356805.
