Health
Gluten-free ways to boost your fibre intake – The Globe and Mail
Gluten is a protein found in the grains of wheat, barley and rye. In traditional bread made from wheat flour, gluten forms a protein network that makes dough cohesive and stretchy and gives bread that quintessentially satisfying, chewy texture.Aileen Son/The New York Times News Service
Q: I avoid eating gluten for health reasons. Without wheat, how can I get enough fibre?
Fibre can be a harder-to-get nutrient from a gluten-free diet. That’s because gluten-containing whole grains, such as wheat, rye and barley, are excellent sources of fibre.
As well, many processed gluten-free breads, crackers, cereals and snack foods are made with fibre-poor flours and refined tapioca, corn, rice and potato starches.
Removing gluten, though, doesn’t have to lead to a deficit of beneficial fibre. Here’s a guide to getting plenty of roughage from a gluten-free diet.
Why a gluten-free diet?
A gluten-free diet is a necessity for people with celiac disease, a lifelong genetically-based disorder that occurs when gluten triggers the body’s immune system to attack and damage the lining of the small intestine.
People who don’t have celiac disease but react poorly to gluten also benefit from a gluten-free diet. Non-celiac gluten sensitivity can cause symptoms such as bloating, gas, abdominal pain, fatigue, joint pain, brain fog and headache.
Other people may drop gluten because they perceive a diet without it to be healthier than one which contains gluten. (Not necessarily true.)
Reasons to focus on fibre
A high-fibre diet is tied to a lower risk of heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes and colorectal cancer. Fibre-rich foods may also assist in weight control by helping you feel satiated longer.
Getting enough fibre benefits digestive health, too, by helping prevent constipation and reducing the risk of diverticulitis. Diverticulitis occurs when small balloon-like pouches in the wall of the large intestine, called diverticula, become inflamed.
Eating lots of fibre also supports a healthy gut microbiome, the community of microbes that reside in our large intestine.
Daily fibre recommendations, established by the U.S.-based National Academies of Medicine, are 25 g for women ages 19 to 50 and 21 g for older women. Men, ages 19 to 50, are advised to consume 38 g of fibre each day; older men should aim for 30 g.
Fibre-packed, gluten-free foods
Whether you avoid gluten or not, the following fibre-rich foods are worthy additions to your diet. While not listed below, fruits and vegetables are, of course, gluten-free sources of fibre.
Gluten-free whole grains. Brown rice and quinoa are go-to gluten-free grains, each supplying 3 g and 5 g of fibre per one-cup cooked, respectively. There are other whole grains, though, that deliver even more fibre.
Sorghum, an ancient grain that looks like a tiny ball, delivers 9 g of fibre per one-cup cooked. It’s also a good source of iron, vitamins B6 and niacin and magnesium.
Teff, a type of millet, provides 7 g of fibre per one-cup cooked, along with 10 g of protein, plenty of magnesium and more than a day’s worth of manganese, a mineral needed for immune function and bone health.
Other high-fibre gluten-free grains include amaranth, buckwheat, millet and oats.
Enjoy cooked gluten-free grains as a hot cereal or add them to smoothie bowls. Blend cooked grains into muffin and pancake batters, toss into salads, add to grain bowls, stir into soups, stews and curries or use as a stuffing for bell peppers.
High-fibre flours. Use gluten-free flours made from amaranth, teff, quinoa, chickpeas, coconut, buckwheat and almonds for baking and cooking.
Chickpea flour offers 20 g of fibre per one-cup, as well as folate, calcium, magnesium and potassium. Amaranth flour, at 16 g of fibre per one-cup, is also a good source of protein (20 g per one-cup), iron and calcium. One-cup of almond flour has 12 to 16 g of fibre (depending on how finely the almonds are ground) and supplies iron, calcium and brain-friendly vitamin E.
For comparison, one-cup of whole wheat flour as 12.8 g of fibre.
Each gluten-free flour has its own properties when it comes to baking, so you may need to experiment to get the ratios right.
Pulses. Beans (e.g., black beans, pinto beans, chickpeas), lentils and dried peas deliver a hefty amount of fibre, 14 to 16 g per one-cup. So do soybeans, though technically they’re not a pulse. Serve pulses in salads, soups, chilis, stews, curries and tacos.
Alternate lower-fibre brown rice and quinoa pastas (3 g fibre per 85 g dry) with pasta made from lentils, black beans, chickpeas or edamame (9 to 20 g fibre per 85 g).
Chia seeds. All nuts and seeds provide fibre, but chia seeds stand out: 10 g per two tablespoons. Add chia to smoothies, mix into yogurt, bake into muffins, sprinkle over oatmeal and salad or make chia pudding.
Leslie Beck, a Toronto-based private practice dietitian, is director of food and nutrition at Medcan. Follow her on Twitter @LeslieBeckRD
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Interior Health says it delivered nearly 800,000 immunization doses last year — a number almost equal to the region’s population.
The released figure of 784,980 comes during National Immunization Awareness Week, which runs April 22-30.
The health care organization, which serves a large area of around 820,000, says it’s using the occasion to boost vaccine rates even though there may be post-pandemic vaccine fatigue.
“This is a very important initiative because it ensures that communicable diseases stay away from a region,” said Dr. Silvina Mema of Interior Health.
However, not all those doses were for COVID; the tally includes childhood immunizations plus immunizations for adults.
But IHA said immunizations are down from the height of the pandemic, when COVID vaccines were rolled out, though it seems to be on par with previous pre-pandemic years.
Interior Health says it’d like to see the overall immunization rate rise.
“Certainly there are some folks who have decided a vaccine is not for them. And they have their reasons,” said Jonathan Spence, manager of communicable disease prevention and control at Interior Health.
“I think there’s a lot of people who are hesitant, but that’s just simply because they have questions.
“And that’s actually part of what we’re celebrating this week is those public health nurses, those pharmacists, who can answer questions and answer questions with really good information around immunization.”
Mima echoed that sentiment.
“We take immunization very seriously. It’s a science-based program that has saved countless lives across the world and eliminated diseases that were before a threat and now we don’t see them anymore,” she said.
“So immunization is very important.”
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that samples of pasteurized milk had tested positive for remnants of the bird flu virus that has infected dairy cows.
The agency stressed that the material is inactivated and that the findings “do not represent actual virus that may be a risk to consumers.” Officials added that they’re continuing to study the issue.
“To date, we have seen nothing that would change our assessment that the commercial milk supply is safe,” the FDA said in a statement.
The announcement comes nearly a month after an avian influenza virus that has sickened millions of wild and commercial birds in recent years was detected in dairy cows in at least eight states. The Agriculture Department says 33 herds have been affected to date.
FDA officials didn’t indicate how many samples they tested or where they were obtained. The agency has been evaluating milk during processing and from grocery stores, officials said. Results of additional tests are expected in “the next few days to weeks.”
The PCR lab test the FDA used would have detected viral genetic material even after live virus was killed by pasteurization, or heat treatment, said Lee-Ann Jaykus, an emeritus food microbiologist and virologist at North Carolina State University
“There is no evidence to date that this is infectious virus and the FDA is following up on that,” Jaykus said.
Officials with the FDA and the USDA had previously said milk from affected cattle did not enter the commercial supply. Milk from sick animals is supposed to be diverted and destroyed. Federal regulations require milk that enters interstate commerce to be pasteurized.
Because the detection of the bird flu virus known as Type A H5N1 in dairy cattle is new and the situation is evolving, no studies on the effects of pasteurization on the virus have been completed, FDA officials said. But past research shows that pasteurization is “very likely” to inactivate heat-sensitive viruses like H5N1, the agency added.
Matt Herrick, a spokesman for the International Dairy Foods Association, said that time and temperature regulations for pasteurization ensure that the commercial U.S. milk supply is safe. Remnants of the virus “have zero impact on human health,” he wrote in an email.
Scientists confirmed the H5N1 virus in dairy cows in March after weeks of reports that cows in Texas were suffering from a mysterious malady. The cows were lethargic and saw a dramatic reduction in milk production. Although the H5N1 virus is lethal to commercial poultry, most infected cattle seem to recover within two weeks, experts said.
To date, two people in U.S. have been infected with bird flu. A Texas dairy worker who was in close contact with an infected cow recently developed a mild eye infection and has recovered. In 2022, a prison inmate in a work program caught it while killing infected birds at a Colorado poultry farm. His only symptom was fatigue, and he recovered.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Canada is about where it should be when it comes to childhood vaccines, but for adult vaccinations it’s a different story.
Dr. Vivien Brown of Immunize Canada says the overall population should have rates of between 80 and 90 per cent for most vaccines, but that is not the case.
She says most children are in that range but not for adult vaccines and ultimately the most at-risk populations are not being reached.
She says the population is under immunized for conditions such as pneumonia, shingles, tetanus, and pertussis.
Brown wants people to talk with their family physician or pharmacist to see if they are up-to-date on vaccines, and to get caught up because many are “killer diseases.”
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