Fiber is the carbohydrate portion of a food that passes through your body undigested. It’s found in many different types of foods… whole grains, vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds, and fruits. Especially those fruits with edible peels and seeds.

You won’t find:

• any fiber in meats unless you gnaw on the tendons and ligaments found on turkey legs
• any fiber in dairy products or in fats like oils and butter
• very much fiber, if any, in processed foods, in candy, cakes… except fruitcakes, potato chips, corn chips, or in chocolate truffles or other chocolate… even the exotic ones

This is how fiber helps your body and your blood sugar levels:

1. The most important is that fiber helps regulate your blood sugar levels. It slows down the absorption of sugars and other absorbable carbohydrates in the food that you eat. This then delays the rise in your blood sugar so your pancreas doesn’t continue to produce high insulin levels and wear itself out.

2. When eaten at 25 to 35 grams per day, fiber can allow you to reduce your diabetic medication.

3. Fiber binds to bile acids, making them less available to form gallstones.

4. Eating a significant amount of fiber in your meal slows digestion, and helps you feel full on fewer calories (kilojoules).

5. A high-fiber eating plan also helps to keep your bowel regular making issues such as constipation, irritable bowel syndrome and hemorrhoids, which are common in people with type 2 diabetes, less likely. But it must be done right… adding fiber in the form of psyllium, wheat bran, or rice bran will often draw water from the intestines to the fiber itself, thus creating more constipation. Eating fiber from vegetables will never do this.

6. Fiber helps you maintain your weight by keeping you feeling satisfied for a longer period of time than what can be achieved with a meal that does not contain fiber or has low levels of fiber. One study found that people who ate foods with a high-fiber content, weighed 10 pounds (4.5kg) less than those who ate little fiber.

7. Fiber helps you trim your waistline. By speeding up the transit time of food through the intestinal tract, fiber whisks away calories (kilojoules) before they have the chance to get absorbed. However, fiber ensures the food keeps right on moving and as a result, that beer belly and the love handles decrease slowly but surely.

8. Fiber found in foods such as beans, barley and oats, can lower your cholesterol levels and reduce your risk of heart disease.

Isn’t it about time you grabbed a carrot or celery stick?

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