i am calorie counting but i need to eat more fibre, i thought the bread i use (WW malted danish) would give me enough but i just checked the packet and its only 0.9g per slice! the only thing i can think of is cereal (all bran or something) but i don't like cereal, although i'll eat it if i have to. would whole wheat bread have more? any suggestions?
I'm not a huge cereal fan either, so I understand that challenge. Once cereal I do like (though I eat it more as a snack) is Kashi Go Lean Crunch. If you try it, definitely go for the "Crunch" variety, as I've read here that the regular Kashi Go Lean is terrible. A cup of the Kashi Go Lean Crunch has 8g fiber.
Fiber One bars are great for adding fiber to your diet. I usually have one with a banana as my breakfast, and sometimes have another as a snack during the day. The 90 calorie Fiber One bars have 5g fiber each, and I think the regular ones (150 cal?) have 9g fiber each. They're very good, and serve nicely to satisfy cravings for chocolate too.
Raspberries and blackberries have a lot of fiber as well. I buy them everytime they look decent at the store, and eat them with my lunch or make a smoothie with them at night. A cup of blackberries has 7.6g fiber, and a cup of raspberries has 8g! There are other fruits and veggies that have a good amount of fiber too - sweet potatoes are another good one.
You can definitely buy breads with a higher fiber content. The Arnold sandwich thins that I like to use have 5g fiber per "bun" for 100 cal and 1g fat.
I'm sure others here will have lots of other ideas for you.
Last edited by chickadee32; 02-19-2011 at 04:44 PM.
thanks chickadee, we dont have those specific brands in the uk but we have similar versions, i will check them out on my shopping day, i have to start checking all the nutritional info not just calories! i much prefer the bars to an actual bowl of cereal. also great info on the raspberries and blackberries, my gran grows these in her garden so i'll have to go begging lol
i think all the berries are pretty high in fiber. who doesn't like berries?
by far the best bang for your buck is beans. try different kinds of legumes. chickpeas, lentils, edamame (soybeans), beans in your burritos, beans in chilli. they all have a ton of fiber, no fat, and lots of nutrients.
i love the kashi cereal too, if you have it in the UK. maybe you have a similar cereal. it has lots of fiber and protein too.
Whole wheat english muffins tend to be about 3g of fiber for 100 calories. I personally like them more than the sandwich thins.
Apples have 2.5 g for a medium sized one. Red peppers are about 3g each (I love red peppers raw with hummus and added to about anything I'm cooking).
I use a whole grain pasta that has about 7 g per serving (less than 200 calories per serving too) (and i really like the taste, too! - it's Bella Terra which is an italian brand so perhaps it is also available in the UK)
- Fruits and veggies have fiber, and some are loaded with it.
- Certain seeds like flax, hemp, poppy
- Beans, lentils, peas - TONS of fibre
- Whole grains such as oats, quinoa, barley, whole grain pastas, certain rice varieties (not white), whole grain breads
I can't post a link because my post-count is too low, but if you google "high fiber foods" you will come upon lists of foods and their respective fibre content. Naturally, some foods are a better fibre (and nutritional) bang for your caloric buck than others so I tend to compare those values as well.
Happy eating!
Last edited by changingme2011; 02-19-2011 at 08:57 PM.
That Danish sounds pretty low in fiber even for bread! You can probably find some multigrain or whole grain breads with much more fiber. Look for "wholemeal" on the label (U.S. "whole wheat" or "whole grain"). Even traditional Scots porridge oats have a lot of fiber, the less processed they are the more fiber. Pinhead or steelcut oats have the most, but even rolled oats are pretty good. And not too many calories if you don't add sugar and use fat-free milk. You can also add in some nuts or dried fruit as well as the berries for fiber and healthy proteins, fats or vitamins, but keep a careful account of the portion size because the calories do add up on nuts and dried fruits. Example: approx 15 almonds = 100 cal. One dried apricot, diced = approx 35 cal.
I have not been impressed with the WW products I've seen outside the US to tell you the truth. (Never looked at them un the US though, don't know if they are different.) They often aren't much of an improvement over regular food nutritionally, just smaller portions to make the calories lower, and they're much more expensive than the normal equivalents. If you check nutrition labels you can usually find a better deal in the non-diet sections of the market. Think unprocessed: fresh fruit, vegetables, whole grains, unsalted/oiled nuts, etc. Try for things that are naturally high in fiber rather than have add fiber stripped out in processing, then added back in.
The difficulty with a lot of "bars" is that they often have a lot of added sugars or fats, and then the fiber artificially-added- back-in deal, like Fiber One though I do like them. I have not seen the Fiber One bars in Europe (maybe they do have them in the UK/Scotland) but they do have a different sort of All Bran bar that I like much better than the US version. It's kind of like a biscuit (cookie for the US people), thin and crunchy, not chewy, and lower calories than the US version! And comes in regular and chocolate! It's good for an afternoon snack with coffee.
Last edited by bronzeager; 02-20-2011 at 01:58 AM.
aww thanks everyone, maybe my fibre hasnt been as low as i thought, i have been eating fruit and didnt realise some fruits had so much fibre. i have also put oats on my shopping list. im kind of going off the weight watchers products, they are very expensive and i seem to have to eat a lot of them to get my calories up where they should be, i guess thats intended so anyone on WW plan wont feel hungry. im sure i've seen fruit and fibre cereal bars so i'll look out for them too.
I know that getting your fiber and vitamins and etc. from natural food sources are best, but what about those fiber supplements that you mix into water?
I eat a lot of oat and wheat bran: it's basically the fiber part of the grain, the thing they remove when they make stuff NOT "whole wheat". You can put bran into anything--cottage cheese, oatmeal, yogurt--and it adds texture and fiber. Wheat bran is lower calorie and almost all insoluble fiber: oat bran is higher calorie and soluble fiber. I try to use equal amounts of each.
Watch out for wheat GERM. It's also good for you, but has a LOT more fat, and therefore calories.
Popcorn is also a surprisingly good source of fiber, and if it is low-fat or air-popped, it's really very reasonable in terms of calories.
high fibre foods?
