Dietary Fiber: Health Benefits Beyond the Bathroom

While prune juice and fiber chews are recent inventions, dietary fiber has been a key component of the human diet for eons. Our primate ancestors subsisted on high-fiber plant diets, and contemporary hunter-gatherer societies still get most of their calories from densely fibrous foods. That legacy shapes how and why fiber is still healthy for us. Many of these health benefits are still emerging from scientific research, especially around how the gut microbiome interacts with dietary fiber. But enough benefits have been established for fiber itself that physicians have been recommending dietary intake to their patients for years. Even packaged food startups are getting in on the action. Pop a bowl of popcorn, kick back, and listen on.