What Are the Benefits of Fermentable Carbs in Your Diet?

So just what are the benefits of fermentable carbs? Let's break them down:

Reducing the Glycaemic Effect of Other Foods

As fermentable carbs pass through the small intestine they slow the absorption of glucose from any digestible carbs that are also present in the food, reducing its GI and the subsequent insulin surge.

Aiding the Absorption of Minerals

As the fermentable carbs enter the large bowel, the improved bac­terial metabolism they create there increases the absorption of the important minerals - calcium and magnesium.

Helping You to Feel Full

Resistant starches and the other fermentable carbohydrates provide bulk in the food, reduce its calorific density and thus help provide feelings of satiety. At the same time, the propionic acid produced in the colon during the fermentation process is passed to the liver, where it triggers metabolic changes that have also been linked to appetite reduction.

Fermentable Carbs and the Atkins Diet

Fermentable carbs produce an overall improvement in bowel function, and an overall improvement in calcium and magne­sium uptake; the production of ammonia in the gut is cut back; and the carcinogenicity of the stool is potentially reduced.

In this way fermentable carbs neutralize the potentially adverse effects of low-carb diets on the bones of at-risk individ­uals, reduce the load on the kidneys (especially if they are used in place of animal protein) and reverse the potential cancer-promoting problems that can otherwise be produced by the low-carb, high-protein, high-fat diets.

In health food circles, the best-known of the fermentable carbo­hydrates are the fructo-oligosaccharides known as FOS, naturally found in vegetables such as chicory, leeks and asparagus. Unfortu­nately, although widely sold by supplement companies, and pro­moted by Atkins in his Vitanutrient Solutions books, these are among the least useful members of this class of nutrient. Due to the molec­ular structure of FOS it is broken down very rapidly in the bowel, in a reaction which takes place almost exclusively in the ascending colon. This doesn't help to protect against cancer, which typically develops at the very other end of the colon. To make matters worse, the rapidity of the reaction floods the bowel with hydrogen, methane and fluids, too often resulting in flatus and diarrhea.

There are other fermentable carbohydrates with rather more extensive molecular structures which causes them to be fermented very much more slowly, so much so that the process of fermentation occurs throughout the large bowel. This group, which includes the resistant starches, offer real chemo-protection, and the slowness of the fermentation reaction means that they are socially acceptable.