Chapter 4 - “Hay”, What About Fiber?Want More Diabetes Info? Search HERE
contains more fiber than the average bran muffin! Salads are an excellent source of fiber as well as one of the healthiest. Nuts and seeds are also high in fiber. The Abbreviated Carbohydrate Chart in the back of this book notes the grams of fiber contained in the foods that are listed there. One of the potential dangers that people encounter when they embark on a low-carbohydrate diet is a lack of fiber. Meat doesn’t have fiber, nor does fat. In their efforts to avoid carbohydrates, people often limit their food intake to these non-fiber foods and suffer from sluggish digestion, constipation and all the health challenges that they bring with them. True, the only three categories of human nutrients are protein (like meats), fats (including oils) and carbohydrates. It seems perfectly logical at first, then, that if you want to limit your consumption of carbohydrates, the only two things left for us to eat would be meat and fats. But that assumption would reflect a lack of understanding of the role of fiber or where it comes from. I know that this may be getting a bit confusing, but please bear with me. Even though there are only three actual nutrients – protein fat and carbohydrates – that’s not all we eat. The other thing we eat, which is NOT a nutrient – because we can’t digest it – is fiber. So, how does fiber fit into the overall dietary picture in a restricted carbohydrate diet? We know that plants are our source for fiber. But we also know that plants are our sources of carbohydrates. The two molecules, carbohydrates and fiber, are very similar but one can be digested (carbohydrates) and the other can’t (the fiber). If we want to limit our carbohydrates, the question we have to address is, “How do we get enough fiber without getting excess carbs too?” The good news is that some plants have almost no carbohydrates at all. The bad news is that other plants have lots of carbs. Bananas and pineapples, for instance, may have plenty of fiber but they’re also very high in sugars (concentrated carbohydrates) even for fruits. All fruits are high in carbohydrates.
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