Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | Not a silly question at all!

The pear skin is mostly insoluble fiber - the pear flesh is mostly soluble. This is true for many grains, cereals, vegetables, and fruits - the outer skin, shell, bran, hull, peel, etc. is insoluble fiber, while the inner kernel or flesh is soluble fiber.

There's a really detailed explanation of this I've copied from First Year IBS:

"I'm confused! How can the same food have insoluble and soluble fiber?

Most all grains, cereals, legumes, and tubers have an outer insoluble fiber layer, and a soluble fiber interior (and the same is true for some fruits and vegetables, such as apples and zucchini). It's very easy to actually see this with your own eyes. If you take a cooked grain of brown rice, wheat berry, kernel of corn, potato, or bean you can separate the tough exterior (the bran, skin, or shell) from the creamy interior. When the bran is removed from wheat berries and they're milled the result is white flour; when the bran is removed from brown rice the result is white rice. There aren't many similar common commercial processes that remove the insoluble fiber exterior from legumes, fruits, or vegetables, but finely blending, pureeing, or peeling these whole foods will greatly minimize their trigger risk.

Wheat in particular causes confusion for many, many people with IBS who are unsure about whether or not it is a safe food for them. There is no flat yes or no answer to this concern because, as we've just learned, it depends. Whole wheat, with its outer layer of bran, is high in insoluble fiber. This means that it's a trigger. That's why whole wheat bread, whole wheat cereals, and bran can cause such awful problems for people with IBS.

However, when you remove the bran from whole wheat you end up with white flour (the regular kind you can buy in any grocery store, that you using in baking cookies, breads, muffins, etc.). Though this is still wheat flour, it is not whole wheat flour, and this makes a world of difference. White flour contains no insoluble fiber but it does have soluble fiber, which is the stabilizing force of the IBS diet (just picture the thick gel that results when you dissolve a piece of white bread in a glass of water). This is why white breads are such great safe staples."

By finely chopping, pureeing, or cooking the insoluble fiber foods, you really make that fiber much easier to digest and it will be a lot less likely to trigger IBS attacks. So you can actually eat quite a bit of insoluble fiber, as long as you do so carefully.

For your pear, when you peel it you're removing altogether most of the insoluble fiber. If you left the peel on but finely chopped up the pear, or cooked it (or both) the insoluble fiber would be a lot easier on you. Combining the pear with even more soluble fiber (oatmeal or white flour, say) would help as well. The insoluble fiber won't become soluble from all these steps, it will just become much easier for your gut to handle.

Best,
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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