Do we need fiber? Before I answer that question, lets discuss what fibre is. Dietary fibre can mainly be found in wholegrain cereals, fruits, and vegetables. It is made up of the indigestible compounds of plants that pass mostly unchanged through our stomach and intestines. Fibre is mainly a carbohydrate.
Although we have heard time and time again that fibre is a necessary part of our diet to maintain a healthy digestive system, the truth is we do not need it. Not only is it not necessary, but it’s also not good for you!
In fact, fibre can cause a variety of problems. There are studies that show that it increases constipation. It slows things down for several reasons. For instance, you can dry out your stools making it hard to push through the break down of fiber in your colon. Your colon can’t break down fibre and this produces methane gas. Methane gas has been shown to reduce the motility of your colon, which will make it move slower, thereby causing constipation as it’s going to have longer time in the colon and it’s going to get drier.
The main reason you don’t need to eat fiber is that you can’t digest it, you can’t break it down, and you don’t get any nutrition from it. Once upon a time our ancestors could break down fibre through the appendix. The appendix is a vestigial organ, which means thousands of generations ago in our early evolution it did something, now it does nothing. Early in our evolution, when prehuman’s lived more closely to our distant primate relatives, it was an elongated cecum, and this is where fiber packed into and broke down into short chain fatty acids. That’s how our distant ancestors got much of their nutrition when we were a tree dwelling species living mostly off fibrous plants. That is what chimpanzees, Gorillas and other primates that eat fibrous plants do to get their nutrition. We don’t have that ability anymore, we can’t break down fiber anymore, and we haven’t done that in thousands of generations.
Originally it was said that we should eat fiber because it helps improve digestive function. Your body can’t digest it and it absorbs nutrients. You don’t get any nutrition from it and it blocks the absorption of nutrients, it also gets in the way of the enzymes to your food, it can’t break it down properly. The stuff that gets broken down, can’t get to the borders of your small intestines to get absorbed.
This makes no biological sense; you can’t say this is how we were designed. In the eighties when the low fat/no fat diet craze started, issues of constipation arose because they stop eating fat. It was at this time that we began to hear that what you really needed was fibre. So why was it that we did not need fiber before 1986? Why did no one suggest this before the seventies and eighties?
Fiber causes harm, it causes micro abrasions in your gut lining, it increases mucus secretions and immune dysregulation. Anyone with autoimmune issues, Crohn’s, ulcerative colitis, IBS, IBD, will tell you that if they eat fiber, they have problems. There are communities around the world that do not eat any fiber at all, such as the Inuit’s and the Messiah and they have survived for centuries. There was a study that looked at contributing factors to diverticulosis, they looked at constipation, meat intake, fat intake, fiber intake and the number of bowel movements a day. They found the only thing that correlated with increased rates of diverticulosis was the amount of fiber consumed, the more bowel movements you had per day. This had a high correlation with diverticulosis, none of the others did. Now they have labelled fiber as essential, which means that if you don’t have fiber in your diet, you will die, WRONG!
It is not essential, the amount of fiber that you need throughout your entire existence is zero grams. If you struggle with constipation, the best thing to do is to eat more fat. When it comes to fibre, you don’t need it, it causes harm, stay away from it.
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