Your bowels are important. Science is discovering that the bacteria in our gut play a massive role in our health, from immune function to the rate at which we age. New mechanisms are being uncovered every month. It’s a remarkable field. It turns out, though, that the modern diet isn’t helping matters. In fact, it’s actually making the health of our gut worse.
Evidence from paleolithic stool samples suggests that the average hunter-gatherer was getting around 100 grams of fiber in their diets every day. All they had to eat was roots, stems, tubers, and leaves in their environment, so the actual amount of roughage was enormous.
They also didn’t have the benefit of farming, so any food that they found was just what was growing wild in nature. Nobody had started selectively breeding cultivars fifty thousand years ago to manipulate their fiber contents. So the average human stomach had to process enormous quantities of indigestible matter to get through the day.
Up until the last fifty years or so, most scientists believed that fiber just passed through our bodies and came out the other side as our stools. But that’s not actually what’s going on. Instead, there’s a complex interplay between the roughage we eat and the bacteria living in our guts. And our health depends on it.
Why is this? Well, it turns out that bacteria in our guts, the food we eat, and the rest of our bodies have been evolving together. What’s more, the type of food we eat seems to determine the quality of bacterial colonies in the gut. Some communities promote good health, while others make us sick. And that’s where fiber really shines. Humans need lots of roughage in their diet to provide food for good bacteria that support health. Without it, bacterial colonies in the gut turn bad, and we wind up with all sorts of complaints, including autoimmune diseases, IBS, and even cancer.
How Much Fiber Did You Say?
100 grams of fiber might not sound like much written down, but it’s a huge amount of roughage. Less than one in a hundred thousand people alive today get that amount.
The average Westerner gets around 20 grams of fiber in their diet. The reason it’s so low is because of how much fiber we take out of the food supply.For starters, most people eat copious quantities of animal products, which contain no fiber at all. And then industrial food production takes the fiber out of grains to produce refined flour. Sugar is also a big chunk of the diet – and it contains zero fiber. And so too is oil, which is also virtually roughage-free. But even people who eat a whole-food, plant-based diet can struggle to get up to the 100-gram level.
Why? It all comes down to the difference between modern food and ancient versions. Because food was scarce in the past, farmers selected breeds that provided the most caloric yield. They wanted to make sure that they and their families always had enough energy to see them through the day. The priority wasn’t to maximize fiber content but to improve their chances of long-term survival.
Most people who avoid all animal and refined foods, therefore, top out at about 70 to 80 grams per day. Finding that final 20 grams to match paleolithic man is incredibly challenging.
How to Get to 100 Grams of Fiber per Day
The good news is that even today, you can get to that magical 100 grams of fiber per day to support your gut health. But it requires conscious action. You need to eat the right foods, in the right quantities.
Most people shooting for this target start with a bowl of porridge in the morning. Of course, the health benefits of eating oatmeal extend well beyond improving your gut health. But the food remains a great way to top up your fiber levels. You can increase the fiber content of oatmeal by adding flaxseed to the mix. Flax is exceptionally high in fiber per 100 grams. You can also add berries and other nuts and seeds to increase your intake. Berries, for instance, have an exceptionally high per-calorie fiber content to get you closer to the magic number.
If you really want to increase your fiber intake, you’ll also want to increase the number of beans that you’re eating. Legumes are, in many ways, nature’s perfect food. They provide masses of fiber, plant protein, and carbohydrates. What’s more, they don’t spike your blood sugar levels – which is a major concern when it comes to carbs. In fact, they can help people with diabetes fight back against disease.
Beans feed gut flora for two reasons. First, they contain resistant starch. This substance is slightly different from regular fiber in the sense that, chemically, it looks a lot like starch. However, it doesn’t get absorbed via the intestines and eventually makes its way to the colon. When it gets there, it provides a unique food source that encourages the growth of health-promoting bacteria.
The second reason beans are so amazing is that they provide little houses for your gut microbes. Occasionally, intact legumes will pass into the colon and then become colonized by bacteria that eat its internals. It sounds gross, but it’s extremely good for you because it helps increase stool volume which lowers your all-cause mortality.
What else can you do to get to the magic 100 grams per day? Another popular tactic is to add ancient grains to your diet. Black rice, for instance, has substantially more fiber than regular brown. And farrow, a type of wheat, has more fiber than regular wheat and barley. You can also base your diet around less popular grains, like quinoa and sorghum. These species haven’t been exposed to as much selection pressure by farmers, and look much more like their wild counterparts.
What About Gas?
If you decide to embark on a fiber challenge, raise fiber levels slowly and drink lots of fluid. Don’t start with 100 grams from day one unless you know for sure you don’t have to meet up with anyone.
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