#483: What are the Effects of Very High Fiber Intakes?

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About This Episode:

The benefits of consuming a higher fiber diet have been consistently demonstrated in nutrition research. Epidemiology clearly shows that higher intakes, compared to lower intakes, leads to a risk reduction for a range of diseases, including cardiovascular disease and colon cancer.

And based on this epidemiological evidence, most dietary guidelines recommend dietary patterns that provide adults with 30-35g of dietary fiber per day.

However, what do we know about intakes beyond this?

Do we continue to see benefit in a linear fashion? Is there a ceiling to benefit? At what level would we see “optimal” benefit or the greatest magnitude of risk reduction?

The ability to answer such questions is hampered by the fact it’s difficult to find cohort studies where the “high” fiber level is high enough to relate to this issue. However, there have been some controlled studies looking specifically at “very high” intakes, i.e. those far above current recommendations. In addition, there are some populations where habitual dietary intake gives a fiber intake far above the typcial intakes in Western cohorts.

So in this episode we go through this data to try to see what we can conclude about this fascinating question of ‘what are the health effects at very high fiber intakes?’

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