Low Dietary Fiber Increases Cardiovascular Risks in Adults

Do you get enough fiber in your diet? If you don't, your health may be affected in more ways than you might think. Scientists have discovered that there's a significant association between low dietary fiber intake and cardiometabolic risks including metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular inflammation and obesity.

In order to learn a bit more about how fiber intake might impact health, the researchers examined 23,168 volunteers in the National health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2010. More specifically, they looked at possible sex, age, racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in dietary fiber consumption. They also looked at the association between dietary fiber intake and various cardiometabolic risk factors.

"Our findings indicate that, among a national representative sample of nonpregnant U.S. adults, in NHANES 1999-2010, the consumption of dietary fiber was consistently below the recommended total adequate intake levels across survey results," said Cheryl R. Clark, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Our study also confirms persistent differences in dietary fiber intake among socioeconomic status and racial/ethnic subpopulations over time."

It turns out that Mexican-Americans consume higher amounts of dietary fiber while non-Hispanic blacks consume lower amounts compared with non-Hispanic whites. Not only does the study highlight the importance of increasing dietary fiber intake, but also shows that low intake can increase cardiovascular risk. In fact, participants with the highest prevalence of metabolic syndrome, inflammation and obesity had some of the lowest dietary fiber intake.

"Low dietary fiber intake from 1999-2010 in the U.S. and associations between higher dietary fiber and a lower prevalence of cardiometabolic risks suggest the need to develop new strategies and policies to increase dietary fiber intake," said Clark in a news release. "Additional research is needed to determine effective clinical and population-based strategies for improving fiber intake trends in diverse groups."

The findings are published in The American Journal of Medicine.