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Climb Off the Bran Wagon
Perhaps one reason for the wide acceptance of the suggestion
that fibre is an important, if not essential, dietary component is
that it had the enthusiastic support of commercial interests.
PROFESSOR JOHN YUDKIN
With cereals comes bran (cereal fibre). We have been urged for generations to eat fibre to prevent and cure many bowel and other health conditions. However, research shows that, while vegetable fibre may be relatively harmless, bran increases the risk of many of the conditions it is promoted to prevent and cure — and a lot more as well.
Part 1: Introduction
The belief that regular bowel movement is important for health is very ancient. In 1932 a 'New Health' movement was promoted in which people were urged to include plenty of roughage in their diets and it was hoped then that the prompt passing of stools after each substantial meal would reduce the incidence of intestinal diseases.1 Thirty years later Dr Dennis Burkitt, while working as a doctor in Africa, discovered that there were far fewer cases of colon cancer among rural black Africans than among Europeans and Americans. He attributed this to the Africans' relatively crude diet.2 The theory was that fibre — that part of a vegetable which passes undigested through the human gastrointestinal tract — hastened the passage of the bowel contents thus allowing less time for cancer-inducing agents to form. This, of course, presupposed that food became carcinogenic in the gut; there was no evidence that it did. Neither was there any evidence that moving food through the intestine at a faster rate decreased the risk of cancer.
So the theory was unsubstantiated at the time and it was to be disproved later when the rural Africans moved into towns and adopted a western-style, low fibre diet, and it was noticed that they continued to have a low incidence of colon cancer. This pattern has also continued with the second generation. It should also be noted that the rural Africans' lifestyle is quite different from that of the western city dweller: their diet is different in that their energy intake is lower and they eat less protein, fat and sugar; they are also not exposed to so many pollutants, toxins or mental stresses and any of these factors could be responsible for the difference in disease patterns. Other studies have also shown that there are western communities (the Mormons of Utah, for example) who also enjoy a low incidence of colon cancer but eat a low fibre diet.3 Nevertheless, the later findings were not publicized; Burkitt's theories caught the attention of the media who, always ready to exploit a good story, expanded what was at best a very weak hypothesis into a treatment dogma which teaches that fibre is a panacea for all manner of illnesses.4
Commercial interests were quick to see the potential in the recommendation. Although Burkitt's recommendations were based on vegetable fibre, bran has a far higher fibre content than vegetables and bran was a practically worthless by-product of the milling process which, until then, had been thrown away. Bran is quite inedible — there is no known enzyme in the human body that can digest it; nevertheless, backed by Burkitt's fibre hypothesis, commercial interests could now promote it as a valuable food. Virtually overnight, it became a highly priced profit maker. The late Dr John Yudkin, Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics at London University, pointed out that 'perhaps one reason for the wide acceptance of the suggestion that fibre is an important, if not essential, dietary component is that it had the enthusiastic support of commercial interests.'5
Dr Hugh Trowell, Burkitt's partner and another strong advocate of dietary fibre, confirmed this in 1974, saying that: 'a serious confusion of thought is produced by referring to the dietary fibre hypothesis as the bran hypothesis, for many Africans do not consume cereal or bran but remain almost free of constipation, irritable bowel syndrome and diverticular disease.'6
Bran is the tough outer covering of cereal grains. Every civilization in history has devised methods and implements solely for the purpose of separating bran from the grain so that they would not have to eat it.
Last updated 1 April 2010
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