Dietary fiber is back in the news.
Dietary fiber starting receiving attention almost twenty years ago as a possible wonder substance with claims that it prevented heart disease and colon cancer. It got relatively little respect from the medical community because no long term studies had been done to verify its benefits and its side effects. Since that time some research studies have shown that dietary fiber does have significant health benefits. Fiber's benefits to the heart are so strong that a high fiber diet not only benefited men with good diet and exercise habits but reduced the risk of heart disease for men who were overweight and had sedentary lifestyles. Even smokers got some benefit from increased dietary fiber.