Hello and welcome to Zoe Shorts, the Bite Size podcast where we discuss one topic around

science and nutrition. I'm Jonathan Wolf and this week I'm joined once again by

board certified gastroenterologist and Zoe's US Medical Director, Dr. Will Balswitch.

And today's subject is fiber.

This is a topic that I love talking about, it's one of my great passions. Fiber is one of

the most misunderstood nutrients and despite its potential health benefits, the majority

of people in the United States and the UK, they don't have enough fiber in their diets.

And I'm glad we could get the world's most passionate man about fiber onto this podcast

world. So why aren't people eating enough fiber?

Well we think there's a clear answer to this question and there's also very solid research

evidence to back it up. Fantastic, so let's get started.

Let's start with what is fiber. This may shock people. Fiber is a type of carbohydrate

that the body simply isn't able to digest and most carbohydrates they're broken down

by the body and they're made into their pieces which is glucose, sugar, people have heard

about this. Fiber can't be broken down into sugar molecules and because of this it passes

all the way through your body undigested and there's two main types of fiber that people

need to know about. One is soluble fiber and the second is insoluble fiber. Soluble

means that if you were to put it into a drink and stir it, it would dissolve.

Makes sense, I guess that's why it's called soluble.

Yeah, it's implicit and it's nice when science actually the words make sense. So...

Doesn't always happen. Exactly. Research shows that soluble fiber can

lower our glucose levels and our cholesterol and there's a number of other health benefits

...