Attune Foods' LinksbyAnnelies @ attune
There is never a lack of fad diets. In the late 80’s, the trend revolved around the all-importance of oat bran in your diet. A few years ago and still present today came the superfruits. At one point there was a diet that promoted high protein intake with minimal carbohydrates. Another diet involved eating based on your blood type. Yet another one of popularity revolved around eating based on the glycemic index of food. While still another one involved going vegan for weight loss. It would be safe to say that each year a new book comes out touting the latest trend.
One exception to the long list of health crazes and trends that has held its own is fiber. In fact, during 2009, a resurgence of the importance of fiber started becoming visible through fiber fortification of foods not typically associated with fiber. Not all fiber is created equally. Naturally occurring fiber-rich foods are best, with examples including fruit, vegetables and whole grains. Our Uncle Sam high fiber cereal is a good example of a food with naturally occurring fiber in its toasted whole wheat flakes. Insoluble and soluble fiber both work to keep your digestive system operating properly. Another kind of fiber that you might see in the list of ingredients for fortified fibered up foods include inulin. Many companies have jumped on the bandwagon adding inulin to their ingredients to back a fiber-rich claim. I have written about why we use inulin in our attune Münch probiotic granola before, but it never hurts to have a small refresher.
Inulin can be derived from chicory root, agave or Jerusalem artichoke. What makes it of such interest to us at attune is that it’s a prebiotic. Gibson & Roberfroid defined prebiotics in 1995 as “Non-digestible food ingredients that beneficially affect the host by selectively stimulating the growth and/or activity of one or a limited number of bacterial species already resident in the colon, and thus attempt to improve host health.” Prebiotics and probiotics work really well together, as prebiotics help feed and nourish the probiotics. So, while you might see inulin on ingredient panels of many different foods, our addition of inulin is intentional for adding fiber but more importantly for creating the synbiotics of probiotics in combination with prebiotics. And that does a tummy good.
