The amount of fiber you consume may have something to do with the amount of extra weight you carry around. There are two places where the body can gather fat, subcutaneous (beneath the skin) tissue and visceral tissue, which is fat around the organs. A study of 85 Hispanics between the ages of 11 and 17 was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2009; 90(5): 1160-6) looked at the relationship between dietary fiber and the amount of visceral fat. Information about the subjects’ diets was obtained from what they could recall from the previous two days. Body fat was measured using MRI and dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. It was found that higher dietary fiber intake was associated with lower visceral adipose tissue. The researchers found that even minor reductions in fiber intake had a profound effect on the subjects having an increase in fat.
