Tag Archives: Fiber

A Whole Lot of Veggies Going On

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small ten-vegetable-soupIt’s National Garden Month and what better way to celebrate than trying our Health-e-Recipe for Ten Vegetable Soup. Chunky and filled with satisfying fiber, this soup brings you a wealth of cancer-fighting phytochemicals.

At 70 calories a serving, you can savor this tasty combination of cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, potato, onion, leeks, celery, tomatoes and Swiss chard. Parsley and thyme also offer health-boosting compounds, as does red pepper. In fact, every ingredient has cancer protection to offer.

Eaten together, the different set of phytochemicals in each kind of vegetable reinforces the health benefits of the other veggies. That’s why AICR recommends eating a wide variety of plant foods — including vegetables, fruits, whole grains and beans — for the majority of your diet (2/3 or more of your plate at each meal, or bowl in this case) to get important phytochemicals plus vitamins, minerals and fiber.

Add a piece of whole-wheat bread or some brown rice to your plate, plus some low-fat healthy protein (maybe Greek yogurt and fresh fruit for dessert?) and you have a complete and very healthy meal.

The AICR Test Kitchen offers more delicious cancer-preventive recipes. Subscribe to our weekly Health-e-Recipes.

Study: Fiber, Gut Bacteria and Colorectal Adenoma Risk

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Bacteria

Evidence is strong that consuming high amounts of dietary fiber protects against colorectal cancer. Previous research has suggested that fiber may play a role in colon cancer prevention due to its interaction with trillions of bacteria in our gut.

Now, a study adds to that evidence by focusing on advanced colorectal adenoma, a non-cancerous tumor that has the potential to develop into cancer.

The study, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggests that a high-fiber diet promotes healthy gut bacteria and its byproducts.

Gut microbiota are the microorganisms that live in our digestive tracts – in our stomach, intestines, and colon. We have about 10 trillion human cells in our body, but we have way more – about 100 trillion – microorganisms residing in our gut. A growing body of research is showing that these microorganisms are important to our health – from training our immune system, to producing vitamins and fighting off harmful bacteria. Continue reading →

Weeniwinks & 100 Years of Nutrition, Part 1: Nutrition Advice

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Physical Culture 300wAmericans have been trying to make sense of food, nutrition and what a healthy diet is for at least 100 years. And throughout, health professionals (and others) have given advice liberally. How has that advice changed?

Certainly, we know much more about diet and cancer prevention. Even just 30 years ago most people did not believe the idea that what we eat would affect our risk for cancer. But now AICR has specific, evidence-based recommendations for cancer prevention.

We also have more powerful information and evidence for how foods and nutrients affect our health in other ways, both short-term and long-term. We understand how to treat diseases related to diet much better – like celiac disease and diabetes. We also know more about nutrition in illness recovery.  And as we learn more about genomics, metabolomics and other omics, we can address individual needs and improve personalized diets for disease prevention.

Yet, even with all the research and new discoveries, we still struggle with helping people take nutrition knowledge and put it into practice on their plates. Today’s barriers to healthful eating include supersized and ever abundant overly processed foods. We advise getting back to basics – eating more vegetables, fruit, whole grains and legumes.

So what might we have seen for nutrition advice 100 years ago?

One book that may give us a glimpse, published in 1924 book, is called “Physical Culture Food Directory.” The author, Milo Hastings, was an American inventor, author, and nutritionist. He also invented a snack for children, called Weeniwinks, based on natural grains and no sugar. I don’t know how typical this book was for the time, but it’s interesting to see parallels to today’s popular nutrition books through his words.

On making nutrition more understandable:

“It has been my job to translate scientific facts and theories concerning human food and its relation to health and disease into a form…most understandable…and useful to the general public.” (A job description recognizable to the modern dietitian.) Continue reading →