HEALTH TIPS: Does fiber help?

Health Tip – Audio Version - Does fiber help?
Health Tip – Healthy Next Step: Colorectal Cancer (PDQ®): Prevention (National Cancer Institute)

Eat lots of fiber, and you could lower your risk of colorectal cancer. Some studies have indicated that, anyway. Trouble is, other studies, some of which had tighter designs, showed no benefit. Which leaves folks in a quandary – do fruit, vegetables and oat bran really help?

To try to separate the whole wheat from the chaff, researchers combined data from 13 studies covering more than 725,000 people. Their work, which was supported by the National Institutes of Health, was in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Stephanie Smith-Warner of the Harvard School of Public Health:

“We found that eating a high-fiber diet was not associated with a lower risk of colorectal cancer.”

But the researchers say lots of fiber is still good for you – among other things, it reduces the risk of heart disease and diabetes.

Health Tip courtesy of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Last revised: August, 15 2006