5 Easy Ways to Eat More Fiber
Filed under: Nutrition
Everyone has heard by now about the importance of fiber. How awesome it is for your cholesterol, for your blood sugar, for your regularity. People often ask me how they can get more fiber in their diet. The usual answer of eat more fruit and veggies tends to falls on deaf ears, so here are some quick and easy dietary additions to increase your fiber intake. Just be sure drink plenty of water!
1. Eat more Milled Flax Seeds
Milled Flax is awesome. I am obsessed with the stuff, along with almost everything else on this list. It provides about 3 grams of omega-3′s per serving, along with 4 grams of fiber and can be added to a wide variety of recipes. Add 1-2 tbsp to your morning oatmeal, protein shakes, cottage cheese recipes, yogurt, etc. With its quality serving of heart healthy omega-3′s and fiber, this is one food you should be sure to add to your diet.
2. Eat more Pumpkin
This fantastic little veggie (or fruit, it’s really both) has 5 grams of fiber per 1/2 cup. It is also one of the worlds richest suppliers of bioavailable carotenoids, a powerful antioxidant family including beta-carotene, lutein, and lycopene. It is absolutely fantastic. A great way to incorporate more pumpkin is to make My Favorite Pumpkin Recipe.
3. Eat a better Cottage Cheese
Friendship Digestive Health Cottage Cheese is awesome! Not only is it thick and creamy, but it contains 3 grams of fiber per 1/2 cup! This is the only cottage cheese I know of that has any fiber at all. The fiber is from inulin, a soluble fiber that is incredibly versatile. It is extracted from chicory root, and has been shown to have many unique health benefits, including increasing the absorption of calcium and magnesium, and since it is a prebiotic, helping to support digestive health by stimulating the growth of beneficial gut bacteria. To make this cottage cheese even better, Friendship infused each 1/2 cup serving with 1 billion live active cultures from one of these beneficial gut bacteria, Bifidobacterium, making this my cottage cheese of choice.
4. Eat more Avocados
Another one of those is it a fruit or is it a vegetable conversations. It’s really both, but we will call it a veggie as most do. Avocados are known as a great source of healthy fat, but did you know that one avocado has, on average, 13 grams of fiber! While you do have to keep in mind that there is also about 30 grams of fat in an entire avocado, 20 of it is monounsaturated. Just add 1/2 avocado to sandwiches, salads, salsa, and more to get a great tasting high fiber veggie!
5. Eat some Low-Carb Wraps
Maybe they aren’t the worlds most perfect food, but they will help you keep your carbs lower, and get more fiber, while still giving you the illusion of having a sandwich. Not a bad combo in my book. Be careful with these because a lot of companies add in trans fats, so definitely make sure to check the ingredients list, no vegetable shortening or hydrogenated oils! Can be used for sandwiches, pizzas, burritos, fajitas, quesadillas and more. (plus avocados go great on low carb wrap sandwiches)
6. Bonus!
Here is a fun little food to have as a “treat” source of fiber. Kozy Shack No Sugar Added Chocolate Pudding. It is glorious. One pudding cup contains 11 grams of carbs, with 5 of it being fiber. The fiber is from inulin, just like in the Friendship Digestive Health Cottage Cheese. Although I am not a big fan of adding artificial sweeteners to your diet, and it does contain some Splenda®, a little bit here and there won’t hurt.
Bonus Kozy Shack Recipe: (fiber in parentheses)
1 cup Friendship Digestive Health Cottage Cheese (6)
1 Kozy Shack No Sugar Added Chocolate Pudding (5)
1 scoop Chocolate Metabolic Drive (1)
1 tbsp Barleans Forti Flax (2)
2 tbsp Natural Peanut Butter (2)
Thats a total of 16 grams of fiber. 1/3 of your daily needs. Not too shabby, considering it’s chocolate and peanut butter! Who can resist?
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Posted on October 30th, 2008 by Brian St. Pierre
6 Comments
November 30th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Nice post u have here
Added to my RSS reader
December 6th, 2008 at 12:37 am
Check out Chia Seeds as an alternative to Flax too. They can’t be directly replaced, I like to cook more solid stuff such as bread, cake and so on with flax. Chia will soak up A LOT of liquid so it can be used to make things more ‘pudding’ or jelly like.
High in Omega 3 and fibre too. You don’t have to mill them like Flax either, from what I’ve read all their goodness is directly useable by us humans.
January 6th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Great article. I never thought avocado had fibre in them!
I like wraps as a source of fibre. There are some that contain 31g of carbs, but also 21g of fibre – and they don’t taste too bad.
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