Fiber Foods for Health
Fruits and vegetables contain many nutrients. They include carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. But in fruits and vegetables there are also non-nutritional element that is equally important benefits for the body. One element of non-nutritional is dietary fiber.
Dietary fiber has an important role in improving the health of the body. Fiber contained in foods, consisting of two types, namely water-soluble fiber and water insoluble fiber.
The water-soluble fiber derived from the plant cell wall or outer skin of fruits and vegetables. These include fiber type consists of mucilage, guar gum, and pectin. In the digestive tract and stomach, the fiber that dissolves in water will form a gel to form the volume of food that makes us feel full. In addition fiber also serves to lower cholesterol and prevent constipation.
For fiber type mucilage, there are many layers of the endosperm of grain, seeds, and nuts. While there are types of guar gum on beans. And just so you know, the extraction of guar gum used by many companies and manufacturers of commercial food. Some of them used as a stabilizer and thickener in a number of food products, such as ice cream, salads, pastas and soups.
Both guar gum and mucilage plays a role in lowering cholesterol and reducing blood sugar levels. So it is very useful for people with diabetes mellitus. Even the fiber this type also often utilized to assist the diet in losing weight because of its role that can help the process in the stomach with added volume, so the stomach feel full and slows hunger.
For the pectin found in all plant cell walls and the outer skin of fruits and vegetables. Pectin is widely available on the skin of citrus fruits that reach 30 percent, 15 percent of the apple skin, and a layer of onions as much as 12 percent. Pectin lowers cholesterol serves as the process of digestion in the stomach, play a role in pectin bind to cholesterol and bile acids and encouraged to be dropped from the gastrointestinal tract.
The ability of pectin in gel form was also used commercially by food companies and manufacturers. The fiber is used to thicken the fruit juice products, clocks, and jelly.
While fiber is not soluble in water, plays a role in preventing constipation (difficult bowel movements) because it helps the process of disposal of food waste through the stool is normal. This type of fiber in the form of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. Cellulose and hemicellulose found in plant wall, whereas lignin is a compound in plants.
Fiber does not dissolve in water in the form of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. If selolusa and hemicellulose role in the anti-constipation, lignin just function as anti-cancer, anti-bacterial, anti viral, and anti-fungal.
In the stomach, the lignin is converted by intestinal microbes into enterolactone and enterodiol, the two compounds play a major role in preventing some cancers, especially breast cancer. (*)
