Fibre, balanced with carbs, could hold the key to weight management

Fibre might just be the key to healthy weight management – and nature packages it in perfectly balanced ratios with carbs when you eat them as whole foods. Think unprocessed fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts and seeds.

Research suggests that carbohydrates are meant to come packaged in nature-balanced ratios of total carbohydrates to fibre. In fact, certain types of fibre affect how completely your body absorbs carbohydrates and tells your cells how to process them once they are absorbed.

Fibre slows the absorption of sugar in your gut. It also orchestrates the fundamental biology that recent blockbuster weight loss drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic tap into, but in a natural way. Your microbiome transforms fibre into signals that stimulate the gut hormones that are the natural forms of these drugs. These in turn regulate how rapidly your stomach empties, how tightly your blood sugar levels are controlled and even how hungry you feel.

It’s as if unprocessed carbohydrates naturally come wrapped and packaged with their own instruction manual for your body on how to digest them.

I am a physician scientist and gastroenterologist who has spent over 20 years studying how food affects the gut microbiome and metabolism. The research is clear – fibre is important not just for happy bowel movements, but also for your blood sugar, weight and overall...

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