Too much fiber?

Liquid Hellz

Every time I am at the grocery I see more and more items with extra fiber this and more fiber that. I am worried that I may be consuming too much and what the risks of that may be. I like my breads, cereals, pop tarts, chips, etc etc. It seems like everything I buy is advertising the awesomeness of the fiber in their product.

BoomShake

Worst case seems to be you'll get a bit constipated and gassy. Make sure you're getting enough fluids. I highly doubt that you'll even reach a point of problem without going out of your way to stuff down fiber.

SlickShughes

BoomShake wrote: »

Worst case seems to be you'll get a bit constipated and gassy. Make sure you're getting enough fluids. I highly doubt that you'll even reach a point of problem without going out of your way to stuff down fiber.

I think you've got this backwards, he believes he's consuming too much, not not enough.

Dance Commander

No, he's got it right. Too much fiber can cause constipation and bloating.

Raneados

no, too much fiber can wreak a little havoc on your digestion, both in the form of constipation AND diarrhea, as well as some gas and some pain

some people say that getting too much fiber stops the absorption of nutrients, but that's still debated

make sure you're drinking enough water, that'll help lessen any side effects of minor fiber overdose

how many grams of fiber are you getting a day and what's your body like?

Liquid Hellz

I don't like too much water, drink a lot of juice and milk though. I have no idea how many grams I am getting because I don't try to track it. I guess I am just paranoid about all the "30% more fiber!" and "extra fiber!" advertising on all the boxes I see. 160lbs, 6'1". Guess what I am wondering is what could be some long term side effects of too much fiber?

dispatch.o

There's a couple types of fiber. I wouldn't worry about it at all. Unless it's insoluble fiber you wont notice it. The whole "30% more fiber" thing is a marketing trend. 30% more fiber in something that only has a tiny amount of fiber in it anyway doesn't mean anything.

To get too much fiber you'd probably have to gorge on oats and whole wheat while pounding fiber drinks and supplements. Even then unless it's insoluble fiber, you'd just get some gas.

Raneados

Liquid Hellz wrote: »

I don't like too much water, drink a lot of juice and milk though. I have no idea how many grams I am getting because I don't try to track it. I guess I am just paranoid about all the "30% more fiber!" and "extra fiber!" advertising on all the boxes I see. 160lbs, 6'1". Guess what I am wondering is what could be some long term side effects of too much fiber?

as far as I know, there's nothing that's going to fuck you up from too much fiber

and honestly, fiber is pretty great, you need to seriously eat a LOT of it to even get the small side-effects it has. Remember that nutritional slogan claims on boxes of food are best to be viewed with a VERY suspicious eye.

30% more fiber from something that had 5 grams of fiber is

like

7 grams



honestly, just go back through all the things you remember eating in a general day, post them all, or look them up yourself online or on the box to see how much fiber they have

Figgy

Raneados wrote: »

Liquid Hellz wrote: »

I don't like too much water, drink a lot of juice and milk though. I have no idea how many grams I am getting because I don't try to track it. I guess I am just paranoid about all the "30% more fiber!" and "extra fiber!" advertising on all the boxes I see. 160lbs, 6'1". Guess what I am wondering is what could be some long term side effects of too much fiber?

as far as I know, there's nothing that's going to fuck you up from too much fiber

You can actually cause intestinal blockage by eating too much fiber. It's not common, but it can require surgery. So yes, too much fiber can fuck you up.

Really, if you know you're eating a lot of fibre (more than say, 40-50g a day), you want to make a point to start drinking water. If you can't, flavour it. You have to get that moisture in you.

Thanatos

What you're seeing is marketing. You would have to specifically focus on eating a ton of fiber in order to be eating too much (assuming you're American). If you're really concerned, start monitoring the number of grams of fiber you're getting per day via the nutrition facts; odds are, you're not even hitting the FDA recommended value.

Trillian

If he's eating chips and pop tarts he's not going to get too much fibre.

Thegreatcow

Aye agreed. My nutritionist told me that in order to really have some kind of effect on the body, (in my case, a regimen to lower my cholesterol), you'd have to consume at least 20g of "Dietary Fiber" (you'll see it on the Nutrition Facts, and it'll either be insoluble or soluble fiber. Soluble IIRC is the one that lowers cholesterol) daily to really have any kind of effect on your body. Actually getting 20g is a bit harder than you think!

1 slice of wheat bread? 1-2g depending on the quality
Cheerios? 1 cup has about 3g, so yeah, 7ish cups of Cheerios to get it...bottoms up!
1 cup of Oatmeal? about 8 grams if it's just plain Quaker Oats, so about 3 cups to get there...yum...>_<

So yeah, unless you're snarfing down whole loaves of bread, main-lining cheerios or doing the nasty with the Quaker dude, you should be fine, though more fiber daily is generally a good thing, so do try to work it in somehow.

Gabriel_Pitt

Trillian wrote: »

If he's eating chips and pop tarts he's not going to get too much fibre.

What the Op is seeing is really just marketing. Many products are no more fiberlicious than they ever were, they're just now including flashy labels that say 'hey, fiber in here!'

Bartholamue

You should be getting around 24 grams per day regardless.

Djeet

It would be hard to get too much fiber unless you're taking fiber supplements (fibercon, metamucil, psylium husk) and overdoing it and/or not supplementing it with enough water.

I wouldn't be too worried about getting too much fiber from highly processed food (sandwich bread, chips, cereals, pop tarts, etc.). Most of these are made with highly refined flours where the fiber-containing bran/husk have been removed from the grains. And then they just add some back to inrease the fiber content of their re-formulated "high-fiber" product.

If you're worried about what you're eating you'd be better off looking into not eating so much processed foodstuffs (anything sold in a sealed bag and has an ingredient list that includes a lot of chemicals instead of food) rather then be concerned about additional fiber in those foodstuffs.

Enc

I can't believe a comic edit is relevant to this thread:



Seriously, man. Don't worry about fiber and such. Eat generally healthy, exercise regularly, and you'll be fine. Fiber is the new "Low Fat" or "Whole Grain" trend. Everything is listing fiber to show that it's healthy. The fiber has always been there, they just didn't advertise it because it wasn't a buzz word.

OnTheLastCastle

My roommate's girlfriend pawned off her 'diet system' food from Nutrisystem because she didn't like it. So he had a whole box of food. He ate nothing but it for a few weeks and I noticed each item had a LOT of fiber if that is all you were eating. Maybe 30-40% of your daily value in each thing. Plus it was small portions for weight loss so he'd eat more than one.

Eventually, he stopped pooping. And he goes multiple times a day normally I learned. I'm like a few times a week type of guy so I was all 'what's the big deal?' and then... a week.... week and a half... almost two weeks and he was growing desperate.

Dark times, my friends. Dark times, indeed. So yeah, it is my experience that you can get too much fiber.