Fibre In Your Diet A Link To Good Health
Fibre Linked to Immune System Response
AUSTRALIAN scientists have found a "direct link" between what we eat and how well our immune system operates, a breakthrough that could explain rising rates of autoimmune disease across the western world.
Professor Charles Mackay, working at Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research, identified how fibre in the diet plays a major role in ensuring a person's immune cells function properly.
This is not anything new to those of us who have been listening to common sense advice from the fresh food advocates for the last few years. We just lacked the solid scientific support. Well now it is here!
Speaking in the scientific journal Nature,
"This potentially explains all the previous data that no one had taken that seriously," Prof Mackay said. "I think it's fair to say the broader immunological research community has never really believed that diet affects immune responses.
"This does provide a direct link for the way immune cells work with the sort of things we eat."
Working along with PhD student Kendle Maslowski, Prof Mackay investigated the operation of an immune cell receptor known to bind with "short chain fatty acids" - what fibre is reduced to once processed by bacteria in the gut.
Whole Food and Fibre
It has been obvious for years that the cancer rates in whole food eaters have been much lower than the typical western white bread, white sugar and tea diet. I remember many nutritionists waved this idea away since the whole health and diet connection is too complex. It has been too hard to connect results with the dietary components of good eating - and also I think that the inability for the major food processors to make money from it retarded our ability to see research in this area.
Well this is changing.
Fibre has been the flavour of the month with the increase in awareness of the obesity problem. Companies have been scrambling to throw fibre into all sorts of daily foods. Now don't get me wrong this has to be good overall - I just wonder about the application of the knowledge.
For example you can buy white, soft bread with more fibre than the old wholemeal breads. A great marketing tool - parents don't feel guilty giving their kids the soft sweet fluffy white bread they want! What is forgotten is that the wholemeals don't just have more fibre they also contain key nutrients like zinc and vitamin E and tend to have the lowest GI.
Why do we always look for a single magic bullet?
But I digress, Dr Mackay goes on -
This broken-down fibre was found to "profoundly affect immune cell function", Prof Mackay said, and without it the immune cells appeared more likely to go awry.
Autoimmune disease refers to disorders in which a person's immune system mistakenly attacks part of the body, causing inflammation.
"When (immune cells) go bad they cause inflammatory diseases, so asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease ..." Prof Mackay said....
"And if we were to speculate on the real significance of this, we believe firmly that the best explanation for the increase in inflammatory diseases in western countries ... is our changes in diet."
A lack of dietary fibre could also be behind the rise in type 1 diabetes, Prof Mackay said.
The research suggests that having a healthy diet rich in fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds would reduce a person's risk of autoimmune disease.
Healthy Diet Is the Way to Go
Wow! So there it is a diet with a wide range of foods - touching on all the old fashioned food groups - is the best thing to protect you from the dangers of the 21st Century diet.
Just eating a high fibre bread will not solve your health problems! Balance in your diet is the key and eating what is fresh, seasonal and colourful will go along way to preventing the major scourges of the western lifestyle.
Until next time - eat well!
I will!
John
