Dietary Fiber: Good for the Heart and the Waist

Your nutrition consultant will make sure you’re getting enough key nutrients. Learn more about one of the most important with Groupon’s look at dietary fiber.

Fiber is in a lot of our healthiest foods, but the human body actually can’t digest it. That’s dietary fiber’s core definition, and it happens to be why it’s so important to good nutrition and any healthy diet plan. Soluble fiber dissolves in water to form a sort of gel. It's found in large amounts of foods such as apples, carrots, and peas, and it can lower bad cholesterol by preventing it from being absorbed into the bloodstream. The second type, insoluble fiber, turns up in whole-wheat bread, nuts, and beans, and its bulk helps your digestion process proceed at a slow but regular pace.

When digestion slows down, the sugars in your foods are also released into your bloodstream more slowly, helping curb sugar spikes and crashes—the primary cause of food cravings, if you don't count living near the ice-cream-truck dispatch center. Fiber also absorbs a lot of water in the stomach, which makes you feel fuller sooner and can help prevent overeating. What's more, high-fiber foods also tend to be less calorie-dense for your buck, helping you feel fuller sooner.

Bonus Points

• Experts say you should eat at least 25 grams of fiber a day, with 30 to 40 being even better. Most Americans today, however, eat only 10–15.
• Harvard Medical School researchers found that women on a high-fiber diet were half as likely to become obese than those who ate less fiber over the course of a 12-year study.