I had a friend ask me yesterday how to add the right fibre into her diet. She had tried limiting wheat/gluten and didn’t quite feel like she was getting enough fibre. I can totally relate, a lot of the gluten free products are full of starch, corn and sugar. It’s one thing to go gluten free and another to know what foods to incorporate to keep you feeling good and healthy. Because she was not severely allergic to wheat she decided to add Fiber 1 cereal into her diet and became bloated and sick.
Here is a list of the ingredients in Fiber 1: Keep in mind I don’t want to pick on one particular brand, because the mainstream ones all contain the same type of ingredients.
Whole Grain Wheat, Corn Bran, Modified Wheat Starch, Guar Gum, Color Added, Cellulose Gum, Salt, Baking Soda, Aspartame
Whole Grain Wheat and Modified Wheat Starch – Wheat has been hybridized and sprayed heavily with chemicals and is becoming a major allergen and intolerance factor. Half the people in my immediate family can’t eat it. When I do, the least of my concerns is that I look three months pregnant again and that belly takes a good couple of days to go away. Why does it have the opposite effect of a food high in fibre for some people when it is used in so many products as a source of fibre? Gluten is derived from the word glue. An allergy or sensitivity to wheat/gluten causes inflammation. Oddly enough some people who can’t tolerate the wheat in North America can tolerate it when they go to Europe. What is North American wheat made of? Check out the comment left on this article: http://ezinearticles.com/?Why-Are-Celiac-Disease-And-Gluten-Intolerance-On-The-Rise?&id=6253056
Corn Bran – Is this GMO corn? The stuff with the insecticide inserted designed to rupture the intestine of the pests who eat it? My guess would be yes because there is no mention of it being organic. Corn really scares me, especially after what it did to my daughter. Not to mention, I don’t believe corn can really be digested so why use it for fibre content? As a filler maybe? Fill you up not out?
Color Added – Food colouring is linked to behavioural problems, ADD and many more problems.
Aspartame – I believe aspartame causes weight gain among many other things. There are no shortcuts and miracle synthetic things we can design to do less work. It is a foreign substance and may trigger a famine response because our bodies do not know what to do with it. Consider this, we are the biggest we have ever been and we have more aspartame in our food than ever. Because this cereal contains aspartame it comes with a warning.
Phenylketonurics* Contains Phenylalanine ~ What does this mean? Why is it in my cereal?
The warning on the box serves as a warning so people with PKU, a rare metabolic disorder, can avoid it. Phenylalanine can cause mental retardation, brain damage, seizures and other problems. In this case because of the aspartame in the cereal. Does the aspartame affect those without PKU? I wonder when aspartame will come with a warning period. Especially with articles like this:
http://www.mercola.com/article/aspartame/hidden_dangers.htm
http://www.naturalnews.com/035382_aspartame_side_effects_headaches.html
Sometimes in an attempt to eat healthier it is easy to get confused. The merry go round we as the consumer ride around on trying to navigate the big world of food can be exhausting. A gluten free diet can leave you feeling wonderful but there are important things to take into consideration so you don’t get overloaded on certain other things that don’t make you feel so good. If you ate a strict diet of starchy gluten free products you would not feel good either. It’s also important sometimes to look past the brilliant marketing that goes into some of this “health” food. There is a happy medium I promise.
Natural food high in fibre to come.
P.S – I debated on how to spell fibre because there are two versions. I decided to stick to my Canuck roots and not fight with autocorrect this morning and spell it as fibre, keeping in mind that it is also spelled as fiber.
Keep thinking,
Penny
Some information taken from :
http://www.fiberone.com/products/cereal/original
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylalanine
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/phenylalanine/AN01552
AHJ is seeking for partnerships with website owners in the health care genre. AmericanHealthJournal is a medicine web site which contains over three thousand of high quality medicine videos. We can offer content exchanges, link exchanges, and exposure to your brand. Come contact us at our contact page on our web site.