Fibre
My usual breakfast includes a piece of fruit (pink lady apples are my go-to), some granola (the new Bio&Me range from the Gut Health Dr is fab – the one today contains a huge variety of ingredients and has 8.3g fibre per 60g serving), along with a protein yoghurt/bar.
Fibre is incredibly important for digestive health, and helps keep things regular đź’©. You should be aiming for at least 30g a day. Most people in the UK currently only get around half that! If you are trying to lose weight a high fibre diet can help as its low energy/high volume.
If you, like me, have a penchant for protein bars a lot of these have a large amount of fibre in them. You should still prioritise getting your fibre primarily from vegetables, fruit and whole grains. But this does add to your daily intake too.
Fruit
As this week I’m on Carbs, and we’re talking about eating more fruit and veg, let’s look at fruit with a little mythbusting. Anything consumed in excess (even water!) will lead to a negative effect. But “fruit makes you fat because of fructose” simply isn’t supported by evidence.
Fructose can be easily over-consumed in fizzy drinks and highly processed foods, which is where the stigma comes from. But it’s actually pretty difficult to over-consume fructose from eating fruit alone. From fruit you get the benefits of the fibre and micronutrients too – so it’s not the same on many levels as eating a bag of Haribo (and that as part of a balanced diet is fine anyway!) As with most of these posts it’s not about exclusion or scaremongering about what you must or mustn’t do. It’s about having a balanced diet full of variety and giving you the information to make your own informed choices.
References on fructose: Sievenpiper et al 2012, Khan & Sievenpiper 2016
(Reposted from Instagram)
