About Fiber: For years (about 30), I believed that grains contained an amazing amount of fiber. I never researched this assumption, but blindly took all the health gurus word for it as fact. Guess what, grains don’t contain much fiber! Grains contain high ratios of carbohydrates relative to their fiber content. My food consumption throughout the years was heavily grain based and comprised about 50% to 70% of my diet, depending if I was eating meat or not. As I aged, I progressively became more irregular. So I thought, add more brown rice, it has lots of fiber – wrong! The more brown rice I added, the more constipated and overweight, I became.  I could not figure out what the heck was going on. Here’s the thing, the ratio of fiber to carbohydrates (which convert instantly to sugars) was low.  For example, a cup of brown rice contains 44.8 percent carbohydrate in relation to a mere 3.5 percent of fiber. Compare this to eating 1 cup of broccoli which contains 8 grams carbohydrates and 4 grams fiber or 1 cup of blackberries which contains 18.4 grams of carbohydrate and 7.2 grams of fiber. Or consider an avocado which contains 6 grams of carbohydrate and 4.2 grams of fiber. Which do you think is better to eat if you are trying to up your fiber? Grains or veggies and fruit? Mind boggling the comparison – it would take an incredible amount of physical activity to burn 44.8 percent worth of carbohydrates in relation to a paltry 3.5% amount of fiber. With the sedentary lives we lead, it is a losing battle.  I can’t say it enough – eat more vegetables and less grain, or better yet, no grain at all. Unless you are living in a country with severe drought and rampant famine, and you have no other food to eat, or you are burning a ton of calories and vegetables plain aren’t available – eat more vegetables and fruit to obtain more fiber. Heresy, isn’t it? Goes against everything we have been taught.