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The quickest way to use the site to get the fiber content is to type in the food you want to check in the upper right corner and do a search. You will then get a list of all the different table entries they have on that food and you can just pick the one you like and click on it.
/Ulrika, IBS-D
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If that means there is a part that isn't soluble at all - in anything - then why is that interesting to know? What's insoluble in the digestive system should be what is interesting and that would then be both totally insoluble and water-insoluble. So why list it in this way?
/Ulrika, IBS-D
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I have now posted a question to the people behind the Fineli food database about what exactly is included in the fiber listing. I will put the answer here when I get it.
/Ulrika, IBS-D
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IBS-C with pain and bloat
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You've been posting a couple of months longer than I have, so I'm no more expert than you are and I know you've seen the issue of fiber counts in charts and labels come up over and over before just as I have. However, since you want to keep this pot boiling, I'm happy to share my thoughts on this subject once again - and once and for all.
Fair warning to everyone else: This is really long and probably pretty boring. Feel free to skip to the last few paragraphs where I give my conclusion.
Fiber charts are unreliable. There are 4 different sites I've seen people post about either recently or a while back where it's possible to find fiber information about foods:
KTL (the Finnish site Ulrika references)
USDA (gives only total fiber, no breakdown)
GMF (this is Abigail's table)
Northwestern (this is from BobK)
If you compare the same food across all four sites, you will find differences in what they report. For example, KTL reports that 100 grams of potato baked with skin have 0.9 grams of total fiber. The USDA claims it has 2.2 grams of fiber.
Similarly, the KLT tables says that 100 grams of walnuts have 15.9 grams of fiber, only 5 of them water-insoluble while the GMF tables say that 100 grams of walnuts have 6.75 grams of fiber, 3.24 of them insoluble. The USDA says 100 grams of walnuts have 6.7 grams of fiber which brings the USDA in line with the GMF tables.
There are even what appear to be inconsistencies within tables. I know there are (or were) some within the Northwestern chart - Soluble plus Insoluble didn't add up to Total for some foods.
In the KTL chart, 100 grams of pear WITH skin has 3.4 grams of total fiber, 1.8 grams of it Insoluble. At the same time, 100 grams of pear WITHOUT skin has 3.9 grams of total fiber, of which 2.1 is Insoluble. It seems unlikely that peeled pear has more total fiber than unpeeled pear and even more unlikely that peeling a pear increases the amount of Insoluble fiber. (I picked pears to check because it's one of the few foods the Northwestern chart lists as having more Soluble than Insoluble, although the KTL chart and the GMF chart disagree.
Beyond the data discrepancies, there are, as I said, darn few foods in the Northwestern chart that have more Soluble Fiber than Insoluble. The same seems to be true for the KTL and GMF lists insofar as I've checked them and Ulrika's comments about what she's found in the KTL charts bear this out. This says to me that either Soluble Fiber means something different to the chart makers than it does common sense wise or a food with close to a 50/50 split is actually a high Soluble Fiber food.
The bottom line is that I really don't care which explanation is correct. I consider the numbers in the charts irrelevant to Heather's Diet. The Eating For IBS Diet is based on Heather's experience about what works for her and what works for others, along with whatever reliable scientific information is available on IBS and its relationship with food. Considering what I read about people's GI docs on here, I'm frankly amazed that she has managed to find any such information out there at all.
Here's how I think about Soluble Fiber in the context of Heather's approach. Soluble Fiber does two things:
1) provides easy to digest foods so your digestion starts off smoothly rather than roughly
2) creates a gel in your colon so things move along smoothly and your gut has something to grip rather than clenching itself
Think about those two functions when you look for Soluble Fiber foods.
Easy to digest: Look at the foods on Heather's list of Soluble Fiber foods. Then think for yourself about whether it would be easy for *your* tummy to handle. Some people think oatmeal is great; I think it's horrible. I don't think of yellow squash as easy to digest (seeds, skin), but I find butternut squash very digestible. If you are unsure, stick with the obvious - pasta, white bread, potatoes, noodles, white rice - and eat everything else like it's Insoluble fiber.
The gel thing: I have no scientific data on whether any or all of the foods on the Soluble Fiber list make a nice gel. My common sense tells me that most of them would because they're ooey and gluey, although again I would look askance at some of the squashes like zucchini and summer squash - they seem more rubbery.
In conclusion, my take on this is pretty simple:
What the fiber charts and labels say is irrelevant. Heather's Eating For IBS Diet either works for you or it doesn't. Either way, it doesn't matter what nutritionists say about the fiber breakdown of potatoes, walnuts, pears, mushrooms, bananas, or your Great-Aunt Sally's Rutabaga Bread.
Eat the way Heather recommends, tempered with your own common sense about what you can and cannot handle. By this I mean if Heather says don't eat a food, don't eat it. If Heather says a food is Insoluble fiber, treat it like Insoluble fiber. If Heather says a food is Soluble fiber, but you're not sure about it, treat it like Insoluble fiber. If Heather says a food should be okay provided you eat it with a Soluble fiber base, but you don't think you can handle it, don't eat it.
If you feel better doing this, great - stick with it. If you don't feel better, this is not the approach for you and you need to look elsewhere.
The Eating For IBS Diet unquestionably saved my quality of life and may have literally saved my life. I can't begin to thank Heather enough and hope everyone else finds her approach just as successful.
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[Research tells us fourteen out of any ten individuals likes chocolate. - Sandra Boynton]
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Flipada - IBS-C "It's a gas, gas, gas"
**Lauren**
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Microscopic Colitis, IBS-A, GERD, Hiatal Hernia
Bethany, Ontario, Canada
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www.facebook.com/shell.marr
www.myspace.com/shellmarr
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we know that stress is a HUGE contributor to IBS. Analyzing your diet and supplements to death is NOT going to help you any. You can't endlessly worry about everything you ingest and expect to feel healthy.
If you want to follow Heather's diet -- follow it. It's a bit confusing at first but with the amount of info on her website and the info from the message boards it should be pretty clear-cut what MOST people can tolerate. Sure, maybe you'll end up being one of those very rare people who can't tolerate plain mushy cooked carrots. But you can't stop eating a food simply because you find one person who says they could never tolerate carrots. (And, at the risk of sounding rude, you need to also weigh into consideration what else that person says -- many people begin posting before they have fully grasped the complete principles of Heather's diet, and will complain that Cheerios give them attacks, when it's really the 2% cow's milk they're pouring on the cereal that's making them sick.)
It's frustrating to be sick and not get any better. But if you're not getting any better, then it's time to try something new. It's scary when you're already sick, but you won't become any better if you just stay in your rut and worry about if you're doing the right thing or not. I know when you're always sick and you're always hurting you look for a source -- you keep thinking, "What am I doing wrong?? what did I eat that was wrong??" But you have to look beyond what you're already doing to figure out what you're *not* doing. And by this I mean starting with the basics -- the SF/IF balance, exercise, stress control. If you look at the majority of people on these boards who have been stable for awhile, most of them only use a SFS as a supplement, maybe something like probiotics, and some of them use an AD to keep stress/anxiety under control. (And lots of them have done the hypno!) I think it's a bad idea to get caught up in the supplement craze before you've really, truly given the base diet alone -- meaning SF/IF in foods plus a SFS -- a fair shot. And you really need to be honest with yourself about what a fair shot is. I read posts by people who complain the diet isn't working in one thread but in another thread mention getting drunk on Saturday night, or having a Whopper for lunch, or drinking a mocha latte every morning. Or a C who can't go, but doesn't eat enough IF. Or a D who can't get stable, but eats too much IF, or half a carton of soy ice cream. Again -- I'm not trying to pick on anyone, but I see stuff like this happening all the time. Everyone has a perfect right to eat what he wants, of course, but I don't think it's fair for someone to complain about the effectiveness of the diet when he isn't truly following it.
Although I don't want to offend anyone, I would also like to point out that lots of conflicting posts on a subject that has already been well-covered in the past (i.e. the whole soluble-vs-insoluble debate of this thread, or if peeled potatoes are safe, or how much IF a C should eat each day) can be very overwhelming for new people, particularly the ones who lurk. I lurked for a long time before posting, and I might've been scared off if I saw all these long threads that seemed to contradict what I had previously believed to be fairly simple info I read from Heather's book.
The boards are a great resource ... but if you're really confused and conflicted about the diet, it's much better to take a step back and focus only on the material that Heather herself has actually produced. She's helped a lot of people, and that didn't happen on accident. I can't even imagine what the past two years would have been like for me if I hadn't found Heather's diet.
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jen
"It's one of the most serious things that can possibly happen to one in a battle -- to get one's head cut off." -- LC
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