Lessons of dietary fibre

 While I wait another couple of weeks for my full test results, daily lessons continue.

On the subject of the test results, they sent an article describing the processes they use to analyse the poo sample you have to send in.  You might just think this was a microscope job, but far from it.  Apparently they use very new and very advanced techniques to strip the microbe DNA from the sample and all sorts of stuff I don't understand to look for the presence of the individual DNA of a large number of known gut microbe 'species'.  There are some good ones and some bad ones they look for.  This is something that couldn't be done even a few years ago.  Using the data they get from the sample them to identify foods that are good and not so good for my personal microbiome. 

Meanwhile, today's short lesson was all about dietary fibre, outlining it's effects and benefits and suggesting some challenges to help increase your intake.  Tomorrow, I'm going to swap the All Bran I sprinkle on my fruit and yoghurt breakfast for chopped nuts.  All Bran has lots of fibre but also more sugar than is good, so nuts would be better.

We eat various fruits with our yoghurt but we nearly always include a few  raspberries and strawberries, so I was glad to discover that they have a good ratio of fibre to natural sugar, and also contain other good things, so no need to cut them out to limit our sugar spikes.

One practice we have adopted now (and very much enjoy) is to knock up a small salad (peppers, cucumber, spring onion, lettuce, a chilli, beetroot . . ) to eat before lunch and sometimes dinner.  Just a handful, and dressed with cider vinegar and olive oil. As well as being tasty , it helps reduce the sugar spike we get from the starches in our lunchtime sarnies.  I was sad to discover earlier that even my seedy wholemeal sourdough did kick up a sugar spike.  Eating the salad beforehand and having some good fat with the bread (butter/cheese) and /or protein (chicken, cold meat, egg . . ) is great for slowing down the starch absorption.  This is all stuff I didn't know until now.  The message here is that you don't necessarily have to cut out  carbs because there are good ways to limit their bad effects.

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