Posted by brandonb 11/5/2025
Or do healthy and wealthy people with active lifestyles and excellent healthcare happen to also eat more fiber?
Part of the reason we expect fiber to reduce mortality, rather than simply being a marker of other factors correlated with mortality, is that we can identify physiological mechanisms. For example, for cardiovascular mortality, fiber reduces LDL cholesterol / ApoB which lowers heart attack and stroke risk.
I despise studies that do not take genetics into account. Fiber made my cholesterol worse! The only thing that lowered my LDL and riased my HDL was a seafood only diet. Fiber flares my IBD, most likely from my NOD2 genetics[1][2].
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/35079107
[2] https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/22/4775
"IBD patients show that microbiota dysbiosis and diet, especially dietary fiber, can modulate its composition. These patients are more at risk of energy protein malnutrition than the general population and are deficient in micronutrients"
In my late 20s and 30's I was going to the bathroom (urgently) at least twice a day if not more. My gut was bloated and my mental health was much much worse.
[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/1...
Interesting: what is the evidence for causality there? Might you have antibodies/allergies involved, for instance?
However, the actual answer is that all population studies are only gross generalizations that may not apply to you. They are often quite useful because the odds are generally good that they do apply...but it's never certain. Even if you are a member of the studied population your specific circumstances may overwhelm your populations norms.
If the meta analysis showed population differences, why did the article not bring it up? This is what is wrong with nutrition research, then never account fro genetics despite the huge about of evidence that it is extremely importnat.
The truth is that fiber does not reduce mortality for everyone by 23%. I would rather not be guessing with science and health. I lived through that and it took me years to get out of it.
You'd think we'd have been supplementing almost all sugary foods/drinks with it for years, since it's a cheap and healthy sweetener.
Location is only used, in context, to help find healthy meals near you. (You can use the app with or without enabling this location-based feature; if you don't use it, then we don't ask for location.)
Where are you seeing messages? We don't track messages, so this is probably a mistake in our metadata.
Sorry for being pessimistic, it's just whenever I see a health related app I immediately look at the data collected and data shared sections and get concerned. Especially if it's being shared with insurance companies.
Quick edit: That "messages" part might be only in-app ones. Google does not word that well in the summary.
Your data isn't shared with insurance companies.