I can't view the studies on SciHub (DOI not found) but this is what variable adjustment models are for. It's how we know that smokers aren't just people who don't exercise.
And even when there is colinearity between variables and you're not sure how to adjust for it, then your confidence levels blow up because not literally everyone who A's also B's.
“Conclusions: This comprehensive meta-analysis provides additional evidence supporting the protective association between fiber intake and all-cause and cause-specific mortality rates.“
That's the opposite of the linked conclusion, so how did you arrive at it?
> The consumption of insoluble fiber tended to be more effective than soluble fiber intake in reducing the risk of total mortality and mortality due to CVD and cancer
"ColonBroom’s ingredients center around improving your gut health through increased fiber intake. Psyllium husk is the main ingredient in ColonBroom. It’s a soluble fiber ...
I may be being dense, and I realise this is a meta analysis, but the abstract doesn’t explain how much fibre one needs to eat to reduce all-cause mortality by the amount they claim?
…higher consumption of total dietary fiber, significantly decreased the risk of all-cause mortality, CVD-related mortality, and cancer-related mortality by 23, 26 and 22 % (HR:0.77; 95%CI (0.73,0.82), HR:0.74; 95%CI (0.71,0.77) and HR:0.78; 95%CI (0.68,0.87)), respectively. The consumption of insoluble fiber tended to be more effective than soluble fiber intake in reducing the risk of total mortality and mortality due to CVD and cancer. Additionally, dietary fiber from whole grains, cereals, and vegetables was associated with a reduced risk of all-cause mortality, while dietary fiber from nuts and seeds reduced the risk of CVD-related death by 43 % (HR:0.57; 95 % CI (0.38,0.77)).
Scientific literacy is very important. Knowing what kinds of things you can learn from what kinds of studies is part of scientific literacy. Review studies have their place, even if they don't do their own science.
You can't do a long term all-cause mortality study double blinded. It would never pass the Review Board for one thing. It would also be very expensive. And leaving the smallest problem for last, it's literally impossible to do a long term double blind study of "lifestyle".
But the real purpose of review studies is to take a lot of result sets and see if the results from one study still hold. Of course this is susceptible to garbage-in, garbage-out, so you have to be aware of that when you evaluate the results - BUT - that's also true for individual studies, even pre-registered prospective double blinded studies (The Gold Standard).
And yes, when you see an effect or outcome in a population, clinical studies often follow.
They pooled it all together. But my guess is that more participants are found that have high fibre from food diets than high fibre through supplements, so the results are more representative of the former.
> Additionally, dietary fiber from whole grains, cereals, and vegetables was associated with a reduced risk of all-cause mortality, while dietary fiber from nuts and seeds reduced the risk of CVD-related death by 43%
Importantly, as HN folks seem to like supplements, you should be aware that most fiber supplements and additives are soluble [edited -- originally said "insoluble"] fiber, while all of these sources give you a mixture of soluble and insoluble fiber. This mixture appears to be necessary to get the full benefit from fiber—Dr. Lustig describes it very memorably as saying that the insoluble fiber creates a sort of “mesh net” and the soluble fiber “plugs the holes” in that net, which combine together to coat the inside of the upper intestine (the duodenum) and reduce early absorption of calories, so that they ferment more and feed your gut microbiome.
So, to supplement, supplement with snack-sized bell peppers or mixed nuts or fresh green beans or so, rather than a pill or a fiber shake.
This also means that it is very hard to actually control for and isolate that this was due to the fiber rather than the lifestyle. So maybe just find produce that you find delicious and eat it for deliciousness’ sake, trusting the fiber thing to work itself out?
Oatmeal is cheap and widely available. It contains a specific soluble fiber[0] that has strong evidence for lowering blood cholesterol, and weaker evidence for various other health benefits. It's also very quick and easy to cook in a microwave oven. I eat it every day.
But I’ll add: if you think you don’t like oatmeal because packet or microwave oats aren’t doing it for you, making steel cut oats (not quick oats of any kind) in something like an instant-pot yields crave-worthy oatmeal, IMO.
1:3 ratio of steel cut oats to water, 5 minutes and natural release. I make 150g oats at a time and that yields 4 portions.
Add banana, walnuts/pecans, cinnamon, maple syrup. I wake up excited to eat them every day.
This also means you probably refrigerate some for the next day, which increases the "resistant starch" content, which might make them even healthier for you.
I’m never liked oatmeal generally prepared in the US. Then I flew to Australia and on quantas they served Muesli which is essentially rolled oats and milk with fruit which was delicious. So it turns out I liked oatmeal just not cooked down into mush. In the states I found bobs red mill which is my standard choice and I get the gluten free one not because I am avoiding gluten it just tastes better than their regular one.
FYI oats are one of those foods that are doused in roundup for efficient desiccation during harvest in the US. No clue if organic oats are dried with equivalent chemical inputs or otherwise concerning processes. After all, leaving oats to slightly mold/mildew isn't exactly great for human health either, but might be the comparable method of choice (for all I know) to shave a few pennies off the per pound harvest costs.
Those foods specifically aren't cheap foods but foods high in soluble and insoluble fiber can be found very cheap. Whole grains are high in insoluble fiber while black beans and oats are high in soluble fiber.
Yep, the best selling fiber supplements on Amazon right now are made of wheat dextrose, polydextrose, and psyllium husk, all of which are forms of soluble fiber.
Shouldn't it be obvious to anyone that consuming nutrients from food is better than pills? I mean to me it's self evident that eating an orange is better than a vitamin C pill. If anything else because we don't know what other "vitamin" type things exist that are missing in the pills, or that the ratios in the pills are wrong, or that there's contaminants in the pills, and the list goes on.
very much one of those things that people highly steeped in scientific method would often say, "why? if the pills contain the identical chemical compounds why would it be different" ?
See also: "a calorie is a calorie", "organic produce is useless", etc.
This is a valid point. And it is a valid (and very important) question, for a scientist. However, there is an obvious answer that needs a ton of investigation. The "container" of a vitamin C pill vs a citrus fruit (or any vitamin C rich vegetable) vastly different. And in both cases, they are interacting with a system that has a mind-numbing number of variables, most of which are only poorly understood if even accounted for at all.
But ignoring all those microbiome + immune/endocrine system + (human) cellular metabolism variables, I pose this question in response:
The ammonium nitrate in human urine and TNT explosives is chemically the same. Why would it have any different effect regardless of the form?
Sure but you know how you look at science from 100 years ago and you realise a lot of things were wrong? The scientific method ensures we approach the truth bit by bit, but doesn't prevent misteps or partial information. So one can be more sure about some things than others. A calorie is a calorie is more "fundamental" science than "is eating an orange the same as eating a pill", so I trust that more. Because the fact of the matter is that some % of the things we know of today as true science will be proven false later, since that has happen since the dawn of time, and it's hard to know which ones.
it claims to provide both soluble and insoluble fiber.
I eat a ton of mixed nuts, steel cut oats with fruit daily, and other things anyway but without the Colon Care things don't go very well in the bowel department, partially due to side effects from medications I take.
It is also critical that nuts, vegetables, legumes, etc. have enormous varieties of micronutrients, which are ultimately critical to health.
Not only are micronutrients key to long-term health, they are also key to satiety, which is key to avoiding weight gain.
If your diet is missing some nutrient or micronutrient, it will keep prompting you to eat until it finds enough; and it won't be concerned that the extra calories needed to obtain that micronutrient will cause excess fat gain.
The biggest two changes I've made in the last few years are growing a small garden to augment lunch with just-picked spinach, mustard greens, arugula, lettuce, etc. and adding a 75g bowl of mixed nuts (generally almonds, walnuts, pecans, & cashews) with a bit of natural honey or olive oil to lunch. I've never felt as healthy, found it as easy to maintain weight, and yet eating what I want. I wish I'd used the nut 'hack' back when I was in international sports competition...
I think few people would disagree with the statement, but the real questions are how many grams of veggies per day? How many different veggie types per week? How do I know if it's enough to actually reduce my risk? etc.
This meta-analysis seems to have the usual flaw: Most diet regimens studied are minor variations of common, standard diets. As a result this shows the result of including fiber in a standard diet. Diets that vary significantly from standard such as vegan diets or so-called paleo or carnivore diets appear in some studies to generate very different results from additional fiber ingested with a standard diet. In short, fiber is great if you are eating a standard diet, but if you ingest a particular selection foods then the observed positive effects from fiber may disappear.
Your hypothesis sounds more like hoping that there’s some permutation of a diet where you don’t need fiber rather than some sort of limitation of the research.
I’ve heard this kind of thing from carnivore charlatans on Twitter where they’re “skeptical” of the need for fiber, vitamin C, and other nutrients they don’t get on their diet. Since they can’t base this on any evidence, they say “until someone studies my exact fad diet, we can’t really know.”
Until someone studies my candy diet, we can’t know if $nutrient is actually necessary for me. Maybe my
candy diet magically precludes the need for it and $nutrient is only necessary for those on standard diets. For all we know, maybe candy is super healthy when it's 100% of your diet as opposed to adding it to a SAD.
You are more likely to be on the side of wrong to be honest. Considering vegetables couldn't have been largely available in winter in the east/north part of Europe, it is unlikely that they are necessary for a healthy life (considering this part of the world is doing pretty good in many health factors).
Personally, I like veggies for the taste but I really doubt they are necessary if you eat nutrient dense animal products.
I think those kinds of studies have some results because people can't make the difference between real hunger and boredom hunger, so having your stomach full of useless crap (like a ruminant) makes it easier to not eat too much.
But if you consider a person with physical activity the fiber would actually be counterproductive because they would prevent fast absorption of useful energy. Just ask any high-level sportsman how much he like fiber...
Besides that, it is doubtful fiber does anything good...
> Considering vegetables couldn't have been largely available in winter in the east/north part of Europe
Root cellars to store vegetables, among other foods, through the winter are a pretty old technology, so Scandinavia has been eating winter vegetables for quite some time.
That's right but if we consider the recommended amounts, it is improbable that they would be able to store so much.
I grew up in a house from the 12th century that was a priory. There was only a small associated dependency that had a decently large cellar (about 70m2) but that couldn't have been enough to store veggies for the number of monks that lived here (the main house is 150m2 on 2 level plus an attic)? I know that for sure because I had to clean it and remove all the crap that the old neighbor had stored in it (including wine barrels and lots of potatoes, I also found WW2 ammo cache, whoops).
Also, we stored quite a bit of our own veggies and it is challenging to keep most things in good shape; if you are lucky, you may get decent stuff by the end of January but then all bets are off.
What I am saying is that it is very easy for us to argue about those things with all our modern knowledge and capacity but it is unlikely that they bothered with veggies in the winter back then.
Which is exactly why they stored potatoes and grains, made cheese and salted meat. The veggies, if they were any, were the cherry on top, not exactly a staple.
I don't want to quibble over a precise definition of "largely available in winter" but I'd say having access vegetables through the end of January, which is half way through the season, is pretty good eating considering their level of technology.
>The consumption of insoluble fiber tended to be more effective than soluble fiber intake in reducing the risk of total mortality and mortality due to CVD and cancer.
My hunch is that this is an epiphenomenon, and that what's actually happening is:
1. people eating large amounts of soluble fiber are consuming fiber supplements (e.g. psyllium husk); and,
2. people eating large amounts of insouable fiber are eating salads, etc.
What are all the comments regarding fiber supplements about? Why would you ever take fiber supplements? How about whole-weat bread and veggies?
Isn't the point of fibers that they're healthy in the sense that they can't be digested but they contribute to feeling full, so it's just about reducing caloric intake?
It is so bizarre to me (a middle eastern immigrant) that people here in North America simply refuse to eat fruit and/or vegetables. I consider it a systemic failure.
Nobody, and not even remotely in the plurality you're describing "simply refuse to eat fruit and/or vegetables." Stop hanging out with unhealthy lifestyled people if that is your friend group and a concern of yours.
I dare you, go to google and search for "opinions on green shakes reddit" and you'll have a thread of 20 people discussing the various vitamins, heavy metals, fibers, brands, gut-health, gut-feeling, etc that a green shake provides them.
Then you have 3 comments from little timmy stabbles going "I don't understand why you people just don't eat bowls full of fruits and vegetables throughout the day. Monday through Sunday. It's so easy. I don't get it. You just eat fruits and vegetables that might rot in your refrigerator over 3 days how can it be so hard."
Then you have 20 comments to them going, "Well, Timmy, the reason that we call supplements "supplements" is because they supplement something that for whatever reason we find ourselves not consuming enough of throughout the day. Contrary to your lived experience, your lived experience is not our lived experience and we have our reasons for not doing things exactly as you do them."
Like, do you think this comment was going to set off light bulbs in our heads going "Wow, I didn't think of that. I'm going to add an entire half pound of brocolli to every meal! Thanks stabbles!!"
"Why would you ever take fiber supplements.." my god. Tell that to, by far, their highest portion of consumers- the elderly.
And as near as I can tell, that is basically the way forward, plus remembering to eat enough protein.
There's a steady drip of how this additive or that replacement has a knock on negative effect. So I think at the end, making sure to make your own food, mostly plants, manage protein, with carbs for fun pretty much covers it.
Am I missing something, or are all these effect sizes just shockingly improbably large? "decreased the risk of all-cause mortality, CVD-related mortality, and cancer-related mortality by 23, 26 and 22 % "
1/4 drop in mortality just from fiber seems...like too much? Am I missing something subtle about how these mortality reduction effects are defined? Or perhaps these are conditional expectations but not causal effects? (Example: if eating fiber is negatively correlated with binge drinking alcohol, then P(death|fiber) probably << P(death|~fiber), but it's unclear a priori how much of that difference is due to alcohol)
I'm not a scientist and could totally be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the size of the effect depends on baseline risk. If the population has low baseline risk then a ~25% reduction in all cause mortality might only add a small amount to average lifespan.
79 comments
[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 158 ms ] threadAnd even when there is colinearity between variables and you're not sure how to adjust for it, then your confidence levels blow up because not literally everyone who A's also B's.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku42Iszh9KM
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=colonbroom
> The consumption of insoluble fiber tended to be more effective than soluble fiber intake in reducing the risk of total mortality and mortality due to CVD and cancer
ColonBroom = ~~In~~soluble fiber
https://colonbroom.com/ingredients
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026156142...
This yet another correlation not causality result.
>> The PubMed, SCOPUS, and Web of Science databases were searched up to October 2022
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3024725/
But the real purpose of review studies is to take a lot of result sets and see if the results from one study still hold. Of course this is susceptible to garbage-in, garbage-out, so you have to be aware of that when you evaluate the results - BUT - that's also true for individual studies, even pre-registered prospective double blinded studies (The Gold Standard).
And yes, when you see an effect or outcome in a population, clinical studies often follow.
Importantly, as HN folks seem to like supplements, you should be aware that most fiber supplements and additives are soluble [edited -- originally said "insoluble"] fiber, while all of these sources give you a mixture of soluble and insoluble fiber. This mixture appears to be necessary to get the full benefit from fiber—Dr. Lustig describes it very memorably as saying that the insoluble fiber creates a sort of “mesh net” and the soluble fiber “plugs the holes” in that net, which combine together to coat the inside of the upper intestine (the duodenum) and reduce early absorption of calories, so that they ferment more and feed your gut microbiome.
So, to supplement, supplement with snack-sized bell peppers or mixed nuts or fresh green beans or so, rather than a pill or a fiber shake.
This also means that it is very hard to actually control for and isolate that this was due to the fiber rather than the lifestyle. So maybe just find produce that you find delicious and eat it for deliciousness’ sake, trusting the fiber thing to work itself out?
Always is. Is it the fiber, or is it that healthy people intake more fiber. Those foods aren't cheap if you live in a food desert either.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oat_beta-glucan
1:3 ratio of steel cut oats to water, 5 minutes and natural release. I make 150g oats at a time and that yields 4 portions.
Add banana, walnuts/pecans, cinnamon, maple syrup. I wake up excited to eat them every day.
This is untrue, most supplements are soluble fiber.
See also: "a calorie is a calorie", "organic produce is useless", etc.
But ignoring all those microbiome + immune/endocrine system + (human) cellular metabolism variables, I pose this question in response:
The ammonium nitrate in human urine and TNT explosives is chemically the same. Why would it have any different effect regardless of the form?
In the case of fiber; the goal is the opposite of consuming nutrients...
And real food is also insoluble fiber (ie Corn and Peanuts)
it claims to provide both soluble and insoluble fiber.
I eat a ton of mixed nuts, steel cut oats with fruit daily, and other things anyway but without the Colon Care things don't go very well in the bowel department, partially due to side effects from medications I take.
It is also critical that nuts, vegetables, legumes, etc. have enormous varieties of micronutrients, which are ultimately critical to health.
Not only are micronutrients key to long-term health, they are also key to satiety, which is key to avoiding weight gain.
If your diet is missing some nutrient or micronutrient, it will keep prompting you to eat until it finds enough; and it won't be concerned that the extra calories needed to obtain that micronutrient will cause excess fat gain.
The biggest two changes I've made in the last few years are growing a small garden to augment lunch with just-picked spinach, mustard greens, arugula, lettuce, etc. and adding a 75g bowl of mixed nuts (generally almonds, walnuts, pecans, & cashews) with a bit of natural honey or olive oil to lunch. I've never felt as healthy, found it as easy to maintain weight, and yet eating what I want. I wish I'd used the nut 'hack' back when I was in international sports competition...
Eat Your Veggies.
Eat your veggies.
I’ve heard this kind of thing from carnivore charlatans on Twitter where they’re “skeptical” of the need for fiber, vitamin C, and other nutrients they don’t get on their diet. Since they can’t base this on any evidence, they say “until someone studies my exact fad diet, we can’t really know.”
Until someone studies my candy diet, we can’t know if $nutrient is actually necessary for me. Maybe my candy diet magically precludes the need for it and $nutrient is only necessary for those on standard diets. For all we know, maybe candy is super healthy when it's 100% of your diet as opposed to adding it to a SAD.
I think those kinds of studies have some results because people can't make the difference between real hunger and boredom hunger, so having your stomach full of useless crap (like a ruminant) makes it easier to not eat too much. But if you consider a person with physical activity the fiber would actually be counterproductive because they would prevent fast absorption of useful energy. Just ask any high-level sportsman how much he like fiber... Besides that, it is doubtful fiber does anything good...
Root cellars to store vegetables, among other foods, through the winter are a pretty old technology, so Scandinavia has been eating winter vegetables for quite some time.
I grew up in a house from the 12th century that was a priory. There was only a small associated dependency that had a decently large cellar (about 70m2) but that couldn't have been enough to store veggies for the number of monks that lived here (the main house is 150m2 on 2 level plus an attic)? I know that for sure because I had to clean it and remove all the crap that the old neighbor had stored in it (including wine barrels and lots of potatoes, I also found WW2 ammo cache, whoops).
Also, we stored quite a bit of our own veggies and it is challenging to keep most things in good shape; if you are lucky, you may get decent stuff by the end of January but then all bets are off.
What I am saying is that it is very easy for us to argue about those things with all our modern knowledge and capacity but it is unlikely that they bothered with veggies in the winter back then. Which is exactly why they stored potatoes and grains, made cheese and salted meat. The veggies, if they were any, were the cherry on top, not exactly a staple.
>The consumption of insoluble fiber tended to be more effective than soluble fiber intake in reducing the risk of total mortality and mortality due to CVD and cancer.
My hunch is that this is an epiphenomenon, and that what's actually happening is:
1. people eating large amounts of soluble fiber are consuming fiber supplements (e.g. psyllium husk); and,
2. people eating large amounts of insouable fiber are eating salads, etc.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Parsons_Burkitt
Isn't the point of fibers that they're healthy in the sense that they can't be digested but they contribute to feeling full, so it's just about reducing caloric intake?
I dare you, go to google and search for "opinions on green shakes reddit" and you'll have a thread of 20 people discussing the various vitamins, heavy metals, fibers, brands, gut-health, gut-feeling, etc that a green shake provides them.
Then you have 3 comments from little timmy stabbles going "I don't understand why you people just don't eat bowls full of fruits and vegetables throughout the day. Monday through Sunday. It's so easy. I don't get it. You just eat fruits and vegetables that might rot in your refrigerator over 3 days how can it be so hard."
Then you have 20 comments to them going, "Well, Timmy, the reason that we call supplements "supplements" is because they supplement something that for whatever reason we find ourselves not consuming enough of throughout the day. Contrary to your lived experience, your lived experience is not our lived experience and we have our reasons for not doing things exactly as you do them."
Like, do you think this comment was going to set off light bulbs in our heads going "Wow, I didn't think of that. I'm going to add an entire half pound of brocolli to every meal! Thanks stabbles!!"
"Why would you ever take fiber supplements.." my god. Tell that to, by far, their highest portion of consumers- the elderly.
> Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants
And as near as I can tell, that is basically the way forward, plus remembering to eat enough protein.
There's a steady drip of how this additive or that replacement has a knock on negative effect. So I think at the end, making sure to make your own food, mostly plants, manage protein, with carbs for fun pretty much covers it.
1/4 drop in mortality just from fiber seems...like too much? Am I missing something subtle about how these mortality reduction effects are defined? Or perhaps these are conditional expectations but not causal effects? (Example: if eating fiber is negatively correlated with binge drinking alcohol, then P(death|fiber) probably << P(death|~fiber), but it's unclear a priori how much of that difference is due to alcohol)
(My diet is better than it was, but still garbage. I have a mix of fibres that I take daily with psyllium husk, chia seeds, and glucomannan)