Besides all the other goodies, fiber is broadly promoted as a weight loss aid. In fact, the complete opposite is true:
- First, fiber expands your stomach's capacity, and makes it much harder to fill yourself to the point of satiety;
- Second, fiber extends the time it takes you to digest carbohydrates, which, in turn stimulates longer insulin secretion, and causes low blood sugar;
- Third, fiber interferes with the digestion of protein in your stomach, which, in turn, causes hunger pains.
These three factors - a cavernous, distended stomach, low-blood sugar, and hunger pains are the primary drivers of the ravenous, round-the-clock appetite, and ensuing weight gain. But that's only half-the-truth. The other half is fiber's considerable caloric content. You've probably heard the oft-repeated statement that fiber has "zero net carbs," meaning it's a calorie-free, guilt-free product — Question: Do Metamucil Capsules have zero net carbs?
— Answer: Yes, because they are made up of 100% natural fiber. Dietary fiber is not absorbed by the human body and is not converted into blood sugar.
Actually, this is a well-practiced lie.
According to the Dietary Reference Intakes manual - the nutritional bible from the National Academies Press that no legitimate dietitian or nutritionist goes without a copy of - fiber provides digestible calories just like any other food: "Current data indicate that the [energy] yield [of fiber] is in the range of 1.5 to 2.5" calories per gram of consumed fiber. [18]
If you aren't starving - and how can you be when your day starts with three servings of oatmeal - your liver turns these extra calories from fiber into body fat.
Granted, a few grams of fat there, a few grams here, may not seem like a big deal. But, still, if you are consuming thirty to forty grams of fiber daily in addition to all other carbs, eventually it all adds up to extra body fat, prediabetes, and, finally, diabetes.
I don't have to tell you again and again that that a free lunch exists only in deceptive advertising, and that nothing brings on heart disease with as much vengeance as these three omnipresent conditions.
Fiber's Epitaph: If it sounds too good to be true, it means some one is peddling you junk
Junk food, junk science - it's all the same. Take any junk, repackage it into health food, legitimize it with junk science, mark it up to make a killing, sell it to unsuspecting health-concerned customers, laugh all the way to the bank, and let someone else clean up the mess...
This means we are ready to summarize our findings:
- First, as any cardiologist will tell you, cholesterol-lowering drugs claim to reduce the risk of heart attack only by about 30%... To accomplish even this partial reduction of risk requires the lowering of total cholesterol by twenty, thirty, or more percent, all the way down to two hundred, not just a statistically-insignificant 1.7%, or just five milligram per deciliter as fiber does.
- Second, low-fat diets recommended for cholesterol reduction with fiber actually increase your risk of heart disease because they reduce the protective properties of HDL cholesterol.
- Third, fiber from food or supplements without a restrictive low-fat diet has zero effect on your level of cholesterol. As the American Heart Association noted, “A fiber supplement added to a diet otherwise high in saturated fat and cholesterol provides dubious cardiovascular advantages.” [19]
- Fourth, natural fiber in fruits, vegetables, and cereals is always accompanied by dietary carbohydrates, usually five to ten times as many. If you attempt to consume the recommended thirty five grams of natural fiber daily, you will ingest alongside between one hundred and fifty to three hundred grams of extra carbohydrates.
- Fifth, excess carbohydrates in a fiber-rich diet are the primary cause of metabolic syndrome, obesity, prediabetes, and diabetes. All four conditions are known as the major causes of heart disease.
- Sixth, natural and supplemental fiber reduces the absorption of essential fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K, and minerals, such as iron, calcium and magnesium. These vitamins and minerals regulate blood, heart, and lung functions, and their deficiencies may cause death long before heart disease.
- Finally, seventh, I hope you noticed that the actual effect of fiber on heart disease was never studied. All this talk about fiber's benefits for the heart is simply marketing and money-making ploy made from fiber's non-existent "ability" to lower cholesterol in connection with a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet that lowers it anyway without any fiber...
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