Apples Portland ME

Fitting in the Fiber

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By Joe Mullich

Tammi Flynn, a registered dietitian in Wenatchee, Washington, doesn’t need studies in medical journals to tell her about the showstopping benefits of fiber. When clients come to her wanting to lose weight, she advises them, as might be expected, to exercise and eat lots of fruits, vegetables, and lean proteins. However, a few years ago she also began slipping in a secret ingredient: apples. She’s found that those who follow her suggestion to eat three apples a day, one before each meal, lose 30 percent more weight, on average, than clients who followed a similar regimen, minus the apples.

How can a few apples make such a big difference? One word: fiber. A medium-size apple (about as big as a tennis ball) contains roughly three grams of the stuff, and fiber has a crafty way of tricking the body into eating less. By increasing the bulk in your stomach, it makes you feel full without adding a lot of calories.

Of course, promoting weight loss isn’t even fiber’s biggest claim to fame. Heaps of studies indicate that fiber wards off all sorts of serious diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, and diverticulitis, a common colon disorder. Just how powerful is it? A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that a cholesterol-lowering diet that included fiber-rich foods can be as effective at lowering cholesterol as drugs. Indeed, fiber’s first champion, 1870s cereal baron Dr. John Kellogg, who fed fiber-rich grains to all his patients to cure “poisons in the bowel,” would be mighty gratified to hear about its exalted status.

But he’d be puzzled by its less-than-stellar role in the popular diet plans now sweeping the country. In the Atkins, South Beach, and Glucose Revolution diets, fruits like apples—along with other good fiber sources such as beans and whole-grain breads—are downplayed in favor of fats and lean sources of protein. Why?

The answer lies in the difference between simple and complex carbohydrates—and longtime confusion between the two. Simple carbs like pastries, breads, and snack foods not only raise blood sugar levels, they often come with heaping doses of sugar, fat, and salt, and don’t contain much fiber. Complex carbohydrates, on the other hand, such as whole-grain breads, beans, fruits, and vegetables, generally don’t cause blood sugar levels to spike and do provide plenty of fiber. The diet gurus acknowledge that such carbs are healthier, but their regimens still include way fewer carbs—of both kinds—than most nutritionists recommend.

And fiber gets short shrift in the process. Some of the diets suggest fiber supplements to fill in the gap, particularly in the early stages. But the problem with this notion, say nutritionists like Leslie Bonci, a registered dietitian and author of the American Dietetic Association Guide to Better Digestion, is that supplements don’t provide the full range of nutrients found in food.

Plus, most of them contain primarily one kind of fiber: th...

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