Dietary fiber intake and all-cause and cause-specific mortality
clinicalnutritionjournal.com
clinicalnutritionjournal.com
Importantly, as HN folks seem to like supplements, you should be aware that most fiber supplements and additives are soluble [edited -- originally said "insoluble"] fiber, while all of these sources give you a mixture of soluble and insoluble fiber. This mixture appears to be necessary to get the full benefit from fiber—Dr. Lustig describes it very memorably as saying that the insoluble fiber creates a sort of “mesh net” and the soluble fiber “plugs the holes” in that net, which combine together to coat the inside of the upper intestine (the duodenum) and reduce early absorption of calories, so that they ferment more and feed your gut microbiome.
So, to supplement, supplement with snack-sized bell peppers or mixed nuts or fresh green beans or so, rather than a pill or a fiber shake.
This also means that it is very hard to actually control for and isolate that this was due to the fiber rather than the lifestyle. So maybe just find produce that you find delicious and eat it for deliciousness’ sake, trusting the fiber thing to work itself out?
Always is. Is it the fiber, or is it that healthy people intake more fiber. Those foods aren't cheap if you live in a food desert either.
1:3 ratio of steel cut oats to water, 5 minutes and natural release. I make 150g oats at a time and that yields 4 portions.
Add banana, walnuts/pecans, cinnamon, maple syrup. I wake up excited to eat them every day.
This is untrue, most supplements are soluble fiber.
See also: "a calorie is a calorie", "organic produce is useless", etc.
But ignoring all those microbiome + immune/endocrine system + (human) cellular metabolism variables, I pose this question in response:
The ammonium nitrate in human urine and TNT explosives is chemically the same. Why would it have any different effect regardless of the form?
In the case of fiber; the goal is the opposite of consuming nutrients...
And real food is also insoluble fiber (ie Corn and Peanuts)
it claims to provide both soluble and insoluble fiber.
I eat a ton of mixed nuts, steel cut oats with fruit daily, and other things anyway but without the Colon Care things don't go very well in the bowel department, partially due to side effects from medications I take.
It is also critical that nuts, vegetables, legumes, etc. have enormous varieties of micronutrients, which are ultimately critical to health.
Not only are micronutrients key to long-term health, they are also key to satiety, which is key to avoiding weight gain.
If your diet is missing some nutrient or micronutrient, it will keep prompting you to eat until it finds enough; and it won't be concerned that the extra calories needed to obtain that micronutrient will cause excess fat gain.
The biggest two changes I've made in the last few years are growing a small garden to augment lunch with just-picked spinach, mustard greens, arugula, lettuce, etc. and adding a 75g bowl of mixed nuts (generally almonds, walnuts, pecans, & cashews) with a bit of natural honey or olive oil to lunch. I've never felt as healthy, found it as easy to maintain weight, and yet eating what I want. I wish I'd used the nut 'hack' back when I was in international sports competition...
And even when there is colinearity between variables and you're not sure how to adjust for it, then your confidence levels blow up because not literally everyone who A's also B's.
1/4 drop in mortality just from fiber seems...like too much? Am I missing something subtle about how these mortality reduction effects are defined? Or perhaps these are conditional expectations but not causal effects? (Example: if eating fiber is negatively correlated with binge drinking alcohol, then P(death|fiber) probably << P(death|~fiber), but it's unclear a priori how much of that difference is due to alcohol)
>The consumption of insoluble fiber tended to be more effective than soluble fiber intake in reducing the risk of total mortality and mortality due to CVD and cancer.
My hunch is that this is an epiphenomenon, and that what's actually happening is:
1. people eating large amounts of soluble fiber are consuming fiber supplements (e.g. psyllium husk); and,
2. people eating large amounts of insouable fiber are eating salads, etc.
> Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants
And as near as I can tell, that is basically the way forward, plus remembering to eat enough protein.
There's a steady drip of how this additive or that replacement has a knock on negative effect. So I think at the end, making sure to make your own food, mostly plants, manage protein, with carbs for fun pretty much covers it.
I’ve heard this kind of thing from carnivore charlatans on Twitter where they’re “skeptical” of the need for fiber, vitamin C, and other nutrients they don’t get on their diet. Since they can’t base this on any evidence, they say “until someone studies my exact fad diet, we can’t really know.”
Until someone studies my candy diet, we can’t know if $nutrient is actually necessary for me. Maybe my candy diet magically precludes the need for it and $nutrient is only necessary for those on standard diets. For all we know, maybe candy is super healthy when it's 100% of your diet as opposed to adding it to a SAD.
I think those kinds of studies have some results because people can't make the difference between real hunger and boredom hunger, so having your stomach full of useless crap (like a ruminant) makes it easier to not eat too much. But if you consider a person with physical activity the fiber would actually be counterproductive because they would prevent fast absorption of useful energy. Just ask any high-level sportsman how much he like fiber... Besides that, it is doubtful fiber does anything good...
Root cellars to store vegetables, among other foods, through the winter are a pretty old technology, so Scandinavia has been eating winter vegetables for quite some time.
I grew up in a house from the 12th century that was a priory. There was only a small associated dependency that had a decently large cellar (about 70m2) but that couldn't have been enough to store veggies for the number of monks that lived here (the main house is 150m2 on 2 level plus an attic)? I know that for sure because I had to clean it and remove all the crap that the old neighbor had stored in it (including wine barrels and lots of potatoes, I also found WW2 ammo cache, whoops).
Also, we stored quite a bit of our own veggies and it is challenging to keep most things in good shape; if you are lucky, you may get decent stuff by the end of January but then all bets are off.
What I am saying is that it is very easy for us to argue about those things with all our modern knowledge and capacity but it is unlikely that they bothered with veggies in the winter back then. Which is exactly why they stored potatoes and grains, made cheese and salted meat. The veggies, if they were any, were the cherry on top, not exactly a staple.
>> The PubMed, SCOPUS, and Web of Science databases were searched up to October 2022
But the real purpose of review studies is to take a lot of result sets and see if the results from one study still hold. Of course this is susceptible to garbage-in, garbage-out, so you have to be aware of that when you evaluate the results - BUT - that's also true for individual studies, even pre-registered prospective double blinded studies (The Gold Standard).
And yes, when you see an effect or outcome in a population, clinical studies often follow.
(My diet is better than it was, but still garbage. I have a mix of fibres that I take daily with psyllium husk, chia seeds, and glucomannan)
This yet another correlation not causality result.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026156142...
Isn't the point of fibers that they're healthy in the sense that they can't be digested but they contribute to feeling full, so it's just about reducing caloric intake?
I dare you, go to google and search for "opinions on green shakes reddit" and you'll have a thread of 20 people discussing the various vitamins, heavy metals, fibers, brands, gut-health, gut-feeling, etc that a green shake provides them.
Then you have 3 comments from little timmy stabbles going "I don't understand why you people just don't eat bowls full of fruits and vegetables throughout the day. Monday through Sunday. It's so easy. I don't get it. You just eat fruits and vegetables that might rot in your refrigerator over 3 days how can it be so hard."
Then you have 20 comments to them going, "Well, Timmy, the reason that we call supplements "supplements" is because they supplement something that for whatever reason we find ourselves not consuming enough of throughout the day. Contrary to your lived experience, your lived experience is not our lived experience and we have our reasons for not doing things exactly as you do them."
Like, do you think this comment was going to set off light bulbs in our heads going "Wow, I didn't think of that. I'm going to add an entire half pound of brocolli to every meal! Thanks stabbles!!"
"Why would you ever take fiber supplements.." my god. Tell that to, by far, their highest portion of consumers- the elderly.
> The consumption of insoluble fiber tended to be more effective than soluble fiber intake in reducing the risk of total mortality and mortality due to CVD and cancer
ColonBroom = ~~In~~soluble fiber
Eat Your Veggies.
Eat your veggies.