Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | Re: question about rice cakes and also Benefiber -- for Heather or anyone

Hi - do a board search for rice and fiber - this topic has come up and I tried to do a detailed post on it a while back. In a nutshell, there is soluble fiber in those rice cakes, and they're a great snack.

The Benefiber non-gelling thing is very interesting, and something I actually just read up on recently as I was getting ready to add a soluble fiber supplement to the site.

What makes the soluble fibers turn to a solid gel in the glass is their viscosity. Interestingly, the viscosity is actually not related to their ability to hold water, or to form a gel with liquid in the intestines. Benefiber is made from guar gum. If you use plain guar gum, you can gel a whole big bowl of water with just a teaspoon (no kidding, I've done it). Benefiber hydrolizes the guar gum to drastically reduce the viscosity, so it doesn't gel. But it still has the water-soluble properties of a soluble fiber, and it still works the same way in your GI tract.

There are a lot more very technical chemical processes going on here, which I can't put into plain English, and which I'd be happy to be completely unaware of if it weren't for the fact that I just had to read all this kind of stuff when deciding what type of soluble fiber I wanted to carry.

In a nutshell, the Benefiber will work, as will all the soluble fiber supplements, and it's really just personal preference if you want the stuff to gel in the glass or not. It's going to work well in your gut either way.

PS - the soluble fiber I chose, acacia (gum arabic) doesn't gel either. It looks and tastes darn close to Benefiber, but it's not hydrolized and it's organic. It's pretty cool stuff!

- Heather

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Heather is the Administrator of the IBS Message Boards. She is the author of Eating for IBS and The First Year: IBS, and the CEO of Heather's Tummy Care. Join her IBS Newsletter. Meet Heather on Facebook!

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