I work in the grocery industry and can say fiber era is already here. It maybe hasn’t reached most consumers yet but food companies are making the products and trend forecasters called it years ago. It’s going to be a tsunami. And not necessarily a bad one bc it’s an easy sell. Lots of ppl really do need more fiber.

Not the worst trend, but especially comical since so much of food processing is about removing fiber to make foods faster to eat and less satiating.

That was last wave. Personally, I’m wary of products with added fiber, but always choose whole wheat or whole grain. If needed, you can supplement with psyllium.

Thankfully I think demand will have to grow a lot for legumes to rise in price much since legumes are basically a byproduct required for growing other more valuable crops.

It's great that beans look kind of gross because otherwise people would learn they taste really good and are healthy at the same time.

Related, the healthiest sources of protein are very affordable and typically come with a ton of fibre. You can have both very easily

Are there studies showing the increased cancer rate is caused (or at least correlated with) reduced fiber intake? Or is this just a guess of yours?

In Germany they already started. There's protein XYZ everywhere, but I've recently seen ads for high fiber drinks.

I’m pretty puzzled honestly at how many people are fiber deficient.

I once did the calculation for my daily fiber intake and it was well beyond the daily recommended minimum.

What are people eating (or not eating) that leads to a fiber deficiency?

Of course. These things are cyclical. Some might remember the f plan diet or similar.

I know no one asked but if you're a gym bro and looking for easy fiber intake, get the carb balance tortillas from mission. 17g of fiber per tortilla.

That’s the difference between protein and fiber though. You can essentially spam the amount of protein you take in and the excess just gets expelled. The same is not true of fiber too much fiber has downsides.

Fiber is indigestible and not required for human health. It's also a cause of bloating, constipation and gas... because it's indigestible. Fiber does have the benefit of slowing sugar digestion, but you can and should just eat less sugar. Some forms of fiber can be converted to fatty acids by bacteria in your colon, while also producing other byproducts. You can get those fatty acids by eating more meat without the added stress on your digestive system.

Compare the human digestive system of a human being to a wolf (carnivore), a pig (omnivore) and a gorilla (herbivorous hindgut fermenter). The human gut by proportions sits somewhere between wolf and pig.

Look up the actual studies on fiber rather than pop science articles, and examine them critically. They'll do things like assume that pooping more often and having a greater volume of poop is healthier, with no basis. Things like how easy it is to poop or feelings of being bloated are harder to quantify, so they're typically ignored.

Or you get the extrapolating cancer risk based on some vaguely understood biomarker, which is one step below "in mice" as far as science goes.

I think there are two main philosophies at play. Either you give the gut bulk through eating fiber, or you eat foods to maintain a fast transit time. I lean toward the transit time approach by eating plenty of easy to digest simple carbs. Personally I've never felt better.

I think eating hard-to-digest, crappy proteins(like all the protein added to shakes, bars, etc)... paired with fermentable bulk fiber... is actually the recipe for inflammation, irritation and colon cancer.

Won't happen.

The main reason protein is highly sought after is that it's an ego/prestige thing associated with excessive self care.

Our diets are very heavily connected to our social status. Being able to consume that level of protein is all about excessive self care.

Fiber is cheap and viewed as a poor person thing. Nobody is holding up their expensive grass fed fiber to brag about the environmental toll it takes, like folks do with their meat and whatnot.

A lot of the protein fad can be traced back to dairy farmers pushing whey into every product they can.