Dietary fibre: the facts?

Abstract

It is not an unfamiliar experience to most of us to feel that when someone comes up with a good idea you wish you had thought of it yourself, and partly because of this there is a tendency to accept the fresh notion and to use it to explain many unsolved problems. Such was the response to the concept first postulated by Cleave and Campbell (1966) and later taken up by Burkitt and Trowell (1975), that many of the ills of Western man could be attributed to too much refined carbohydrate in the diet or, on the other side of the coin, too little ‘roughage’ or fibre. It was a brilliant idea that was immediately accepted and also an unorthodox idea, in that a low intake of a non-nutrient could shorten our lives.