Fiber is significantly important to the digestive system.  One of the things that I should mention here is that vitamin D seems to have significance to the bowel at lower levels of vitamin D.  The lining of the bowels are made of similar cells to skin cells.  What we have done to our digestive systems is truly egregious.  We have removed the fiber from our foods and then starved our systems of sunlight and ultimately vitamin D.

Here is a brief list of benefits of fiber:

• Normalizes bowel movements – insoluble fiber
• Maintains integrity of the bowel – insoluble fiber
• Controls blood sugar levels – soluble fiber
• Lowers cholesterol levels – soluble fiber
• Aids in weight loss – soluble fiber

Please read the Mayo Clinic page for the full benefits of fiber.

The thing that you should recognize immediately from this list is that excess cholesterol levels are related to how much sugar you eat and absorb and not to dietary fat.  I know that this is different than what you have heard all of your life but medicine is slowly changing while trying to save face.

I do not know the mechanisms, but when you eat fruit with fiber like whole fruit you do not absorb as much of the fructose in the fruit as when the fiber has been removed.  Drinking fruit juices with the fiber removed is dangerous to your health.  If you watch the video from my previous post on sugar by Dr. Lustig, Sugar: The Bitter Truth – UC television, you can appreciate the way he has you remember the importance of fiber. It is “fat or fart”.

It seems that one of the reasons that dietary fiber has been removed is that it adds to significant flatulence.  That is the reason when you eat beans that you have a lot more gas.  The bacteria in our guts that digest dietary fiber become active and create this gas.  It is typically methane gas or the worst of the greenhouse gasses.  That is the reason that Al Gore wants to shot all of our cows.  Just kidding!  The other reason that dietary fiber has been removed is that it adds to bulk which makes the shipment of foods more expensive.

So there you are with your glass of apple juice or orange juice with the dietary fiber removed and eating your white bread sandwich that also has the dietary fiber removed.  I hate to think about all of those meals that I feed my kids when they were growing up that was made of the above fiber-less foods.  I could have just given them a beer and whole wheat pretzels and it would have been as healthy.

It also seems that fiber helps our bodies to know when we have had enough food.  The fiber in food somehow aids the lepton signal to the brain to say, ‘ hey dude, you have had enough’.  I do not know if this is from bulk or from some other mechanism.  It was mentioned in Dr. Lustig’s video.

So, today it is beans for me, no wheat or sugar, and lots of sunshine and maybe some flatulence.  – Pandemic Survivor