Are you really getting enough fibre?

by Kate Mate (follow)

Nutrition (252)     

When it comes to food I think I eat a fairly healthy diet, and that I get enough nutrients from the foods I eat. Little did I know I wasn't reaching the Recommended Daily Intake (RDI) of fibre which is 30 grams per day.

When I sat down and really looked at my diet, I realised that many of the foods I ate containing fibre didn't contain enough for me to reach my RDI. I realised many other people may not be reaching their RDI too. In this article I am going to tell you about foods to boost your daily intake of fibre, so you too can be sure you're eating a high fibre diet.

Fruits and Fibre

Many of the common fruits we eat such as bananas and apples do not contain as much fibre as you would think. The average sized banana contains only 4 grams of fibre; this means you would need to eat 7 bananas a day just to reach your RDI of fibre. Apples with the skin on contain about 3.3 grams per apple; this means a total of 9 apples a day to reach the RDI.



There are however quite a few fruits that are high in fibre that you may not have thought of:

Persimmons - an average sized persimmon has 6 grams of fibre.
Guava - one cup of guava contains 9 grams of fibre.
Blackberries - half a punnet of blackberries contains 9 grams of fibre.
Raspberries - half a punnet of raspberries has 9.3 grams of fibre.

Vegetables and Legumes



Vegetables and legumes can be high in fibre too.
Broccoli contains 5.1 grams per cup of boiled brocoli and peas contains 8.8 grams per cooked cup.

Remember when your mum used to say eat your brussel sprouts? Brussel sprouts actually only contain about 4.1 grams of fibre per cup of boiled sprouts.

Legumes such as split peas and lentils are high in fibre:
Split peas - contain 16.3 grams of fibre per cup, cooked.
Lentils- come second place to split peas with 15.6 grams of fibre per cup, cooked.
Black Beans - contain 15 grams of fibre per cup, cooked.

What To Avoid



There are many products on the market that claim to be high in fibre. The average on the go breakfast drink or breakfast biscuit often claim to be high in fibre. After doing some searching at the supermarket and checking each of the products I found, most only contain about 4 grams of fibre per serve, and are very high in sugar. Othe products containing fibre such as fruit cups in juice are also not high in fibre but high in sugar.

A healthy diet full of fresh fruits, vegetables and legumes is the best way to increase your RDI of fibre. The information in this article on grams per serve was provided by my GP.



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