Fiber: The Next Big Thing

By Caden Carter, Product Development, MTN OPS

It seems like the importance of fiber is coming up more and more lately. It's on the front of more packages, it's in more conversations, and especially with the emergence of all sorts of peptides, you always hear how you need more fiber. But why?

What fiber is

Fiber is a carbohydrate your body can't break down.

While carbohydrates like starch and sugar get pulled apart and absorbed into your bloodstream, fiber doesn't. You don't have the enzymes for it, so it moves through your stomach and small intestine intact.

Moving through intact is what makes it useful. Fiber holds water and adds bulk, which is what keeps everything moving along.

Then it reaches your large intestine, where the bacteria live. You can't break fiber down, but they can. More than half of the fiber you eat gets broken down there and turned into compounds your body puts to use, including the main fuel source for the cells lining your colon.

Why you want it

So what does all that actually get you?

Regularity. This is the one people notice, and it's the most immediate. When your fiber is where it should be, digestion is predictable and you don't think about it much. When it's low, you think about it more than you'd like. That's a miserable thing to be dealing with on a mountain, in a truck, or halfway through a long day of work.

Meals that hold you longer. Fiber can slow a meal down, so it stays with you a bit longer than it otherwise would. How much of a difference that makes depends on the type of fiber and what you ate it with.

A gut that has what it needs. The bacteria in your large intestine aren't optional. They're doing work on your behalf, and fiber is what they run on.

That's the everyday case for it. There's a longer list of reasons researchers care about fiber, but these are the ones you'll actually feel.

Protein and fiber go together

Protein is in everything right now. It's in the bars, the chips, the cereal, even the coffee creamer. Most people are keeping some kind of running total in their heads, and that's a good thing. Hitting your protein goals takes effort.

Fiber just needs to come along with it.

If you've ever ramped your protein up in a hurry, you may have noticed things feel a little different. Digestion changes. Regularity isn't quite what it was which is usually the rest of the diet not keeping up with the protein.

The foods most people lean on to hit a protein number, things like chicken, eggs, whey, and jerky, have little-to-no fiber at all. The more of your day those foods take up, the more deliberate you have to be about getting fiber somewhere else.

How much you need

When you look on a label, you’ll see a % Daily Value for fiber which targets 28 grams a day.

The National Academies set their own targets by age and gender. Men under 50 are looking at about 38 grams and women under 50 about 25 grams, and both numbers come down a little after 50.

Most people aren't close. Adults in the US average about 17 grams a day, and roughly 95% of adults aren't hitting the recommendation.

Where to get it

Food is the best place to start, and you'd be surprised at how simple it can be to increase your fiber. These are USDA's figures for standard portions.

Half a cup of lentils and a cup of raspberries put you at almost 16 grams, which is about what the average adult gets in a whole day.

Doubling your fiber overnight tends to backfire, since your gut needs time to adjust. A couple of weeks of working up to it, with more water alongside, goes a lot better.

When food doesn't get you there

Whole foods bring fiber along with water and everything else packed in with them.

There are still stretches where it isn't going to happen though, like travel weeks, long days where lunch is whatever was sitting in the truck, or hunt camp, where the menu runs freeze-dried meals, jerky, bars, and coffee.

When our diet is lacking, that's where a supplement can step in. It isn't a replacement for eating well, it's a way to help incorporate some extra fiber in a different way.

The kinds you'll see on the shelf

If you do go that route, most of what's out there comes down to a handful of ingredients. They're all fiber. They don't all act the same, and taking them feels pretty different from one to the next.

Psyllium is the one most people picture. It comes from psyllium husk and it thickens up in liquid pretty fast. That's why psyllium labels tell you to mix it with a full glass of water and drink it right away.

Methylcellulose thickens as well. Like psyllium, it's often sold as an over-the-counter drug, with a Drug Facts panel on the back instead of a Supplement Facts panel.

Wheat dextrin dissolves without thickening, so it stirs into a drink and mostly disappears. It's made from wheat and processed to meet gluten-free requirements.

Inulin often shows up on labels as chicory root fiber. It dissolves clear too, and your gut bacteria ferment it quickly, which is why a large dose all at once leaves some people gassy.

Guar gum shows up in fiber supplements as partially hydrolyzed guar gum. The processing keeps it from thickening the way the raw gum does, so it dissolves into food or drink.

None of those is the right answer for everybody. The differences come down to how they mix, how your gut handles them, and how you like to take them.

Worth being deliberate about

Fiber has never been the exciting nutrient. You don't track it and it doesn't give you a jolt the way caffeine does or help you see muscle growth with tracked protein and exercise. Fiber is always the easy one to leave out of your nutrition goals without ever noticing.

It's also one of the simpler things to fix. A cup of raspberries with breakfast, half a cup of lentils at dinner, or a fiber supplement (stay tuned...) moves your number more than you'd expect. Once you know what you're looking for, it stops being complicated and you're on your way to hitting your fiber needs.

If you're already putting in the work on your protein, your training, and your sleep, fiber is the piece that's easiest to leave out and one of the simplest to add back.