The biggest causes of death around the world is from diseases of the cardiovascular system. This is mainly heart disease and stroke, both of which are caused by blockages of the cardiovascular system – blood vessels – in the heart or brain. These blockages cause surrounding tissue to be starved of oxygen, which can cause death of the tissue and in the worst case death of the individual.

These diseases get worse with age, partly owing to the build-up of the negative effects of poor life style in preceding years, are partly because during our standard ageing process the walls of our vascular system get stiffer, meaning they are more liable to get blocked.

Because of this, finding ways to stop the aging of the cardiovascular system is one of the most important parts of global public health. And nutrition, especially eating plenty of fiber, is a key part of that.

It has been known for quite some time that eating dietary fiber plays a positive role in reducing the likelihood of dying from cardiovascular disease (a recent review of meta-reviews (themselves reviews of many different datasets) confirmed this.

A likely mechanistic cause of dietary fiber’s effect is “actions on reducing total serum and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations” in the blood of consumers. That is, fiber reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease by reduces the likelihood of blockages, and the stuff that turns into blockages, from forming in the first place.

But fiber may have a specific effects that improve the state of our cardiovascular system itself, by improving the walls of our veins and arteries as well as reducing the inflammatory effects.

It does this by encouraging the production of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) by bacteria in our guts. This has so far been shown for propionate.

So if you want to grow old gracefully, make sure you pile on fiber!

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Pasta salads can be a great healthy snack that can be eaten on the go. But there’s a simple preparation step to increase the dietary fiber content and make a high fiber pasta salad. This can make the meal even healthier and decrease the calorie content. Why not!

Follow this simple strategy to make a high fiber pasta salad.

The strategy is to turn the starch inside the pasta into a type of dietary fiber known as resistant starch. This turns calorific starch into low-calorie resistant starch. The great thing is you can do this with normal white pasta. You don’t have to use brown pasta to get fiber!

To learn more about resistant starch see our previous article on dietary fiber in bananas.

Here’s the strategy:

1. Boil your pasta as normal
2. Thaw
3. The starch within your pasta will have started to gelatinise, making it partially resistant.
4. If you then freeze your pasta and thaw it, it will retrograde further making it even more resistant.
5. You can repeat this numerous times and make the starch in the pasta more and more resistant (Just be careful not to leave it out too long, to avoid any contamination issues. Also, whatever you do don’t heat the pasta again, that’ll re-solubilise the starch in the pasta.)
6. Finally, add the sauce or veggies or whatever else you want to add to the mix and enjoy.

If you’re interested, there’s an easy experiment you can perform with cornstarch in solution to see the process of making resistant starch.

If you add corn starch to water and then bring to the boil the cornstarch will dissolve completely into solution. This is the form of starch that is digestible by enzymes in your gut. But if you freeze and thaw the starch solution up to 5 times the starch will begin aggregating into insoluble white clumps. These clumps are a resistant starch.

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Banana’s are well known as a rich source of Potassium. But did you know that there’s also a great source of dietary fiber in a banana too?

That’s right! Like all plant materials, bananas are rich in the types of dietary fibers that provide structure to plants, such as cellulose and pectin. (If you want to learn more about types of dietary fiber, see What is Dietary Fiber?)

But that’s not what makes dietary fiber in a banana particularly important. Bananas are also a really good source of a type of dietary fiber called resistant starch. Resistant starch is different to these other types of fiber in its effects on food and effect on the body.

What is resistant starch?

Resistant starch is a really important type of dietary fiber because of its health benefits. For example resistant starch can positively influence your digestive tract and the beneficial bacteria that live there. It can also help control blood cholesterol levels and glycemic index and so assist in the control of diabetes.

Resistant starch is chemically identical to the starch in boiled potatoes, rice and pasta. The difference is the physical structure of the starch chains. In boiled potatoes, starch chain are separated into individual chains which are easy to digest by the enzymes in your gut. But the starch chains in resistant starch are wrapped tightly together inside starch granules. This tight association means that the body’s enzymes can’t digest it.

What affects the amount of this dietary fibre in a banana?

But that association is very sensitive to heating. Unlike for other dietary fiber types, the amount of resistant starch in your food really depends on how you prepare your food. Consuming bananas after cooking or baking will also decrease the amount of resistant starch in them.

This is the main structure of the starch that is in green unripe bananas. But the resistant starch breaks down into sugars during the natural process of ripening. This is why ripe bananas taste sweeter than unripe ones. But it also mean that you’ll lose the health benefits of the resistant starch too.

The bottom line

To consume more resistant starch, you should consume bananas while they are green and unripe. That way you’ll maximise the amount of dietary fiber in a banana every time you eat one!

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