Dietary fibre and health: the story so far

Abstract

The present paper reviews progress in research on dietary fibre and human health over the past five decades. There is now convincing evidence from prospective cohort studies that diets low in dietary fibre are associated with increased risk of common non-communicable diseases including CVD, type 2 diabetes and colorectal cancer. These findings provide strong support for hypotheses proposed by Denis Burkitt 50 years ago, based on very limited evidence but with considerable imagination and insight. For the first two to three decades of this period, research on dietary fibre was hampered by the lack of consensus about the definition, and measurement, of this complex and diverse dietary component and by the lack of appropriate tools for investigating the gut microbiome that is central to understanding mechanisms of action. Recent technical and scientific advances in microbiome research (based on fast, low-cost, DNA sequencing) are facilitating investigation of the associations between dietary fibre, the gut microbiome and human health. Current challenges include the need for agreement about the characteristics of a healthy gut microbiome. Although the health benefits attributed to higher dietary fibre intake are likely to be shared with most types of dietary fibre, one should anticipate that different sources of dietary fibre and the other components (resistant starch and non-digestible oligosaccharides) that make up dietary fibre will have characteristically different effects on human physiology and disease risk. In conclusion, population-level intakes of dietary fibre are low and there is a public health priority to develop and implement more effective interventions to increase intake.