Medical Aspects of Dietary Fiber

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xix

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2. Effect of Fiber on Colon Function

   • Martin A. Eastwood, William Cordon Brydon, Kebede Tadesse

   Pages 1-26

3. The Measurement of Intestinal Transit Time

   • Adam N. Smith, Martin A. Eastwood

   Pages 27-42

4. Dietary Fiber in Diverticular Disease of the Colon

   • A. John M. Brodribb

   Pages 43-66

5. Effects of Dietary Fiber on the Structure and Function of the Small Intestine

   • Clifford Tasman-Jones

   Pages 67-74

6. Colon Cancer: The Emergence of a Concept

   • Denis P. Burkitt

   Pages 75-81

7. Experimental Animal Studies in Colonic Carcinogenesis and Dietary Fiber

   • Hugh James Freeman

   Pages 83-117

8. Epidemiology of Colon Cancer: Fiber, Fats, Fallacies, and Facts

   • Baruch Modan, Flora Lubin

   Pages 119-135

9. Dietary Fiber and Lipid Metabolism: An Update

   • Jon A. Story

   Pages 137-152

10. Dietary Fiber: Effects on Plasma and Biliary Lipids in Man

    • Ruth McPherson Kay, A. Stewart Truswell

    Pages 153-173

11. Dietary Fiber and Carbohydrate Metabolism

    • David J. A. Jenkins

    Pages 175-192

12. Dietary Fiber and Diabetes

    • James W. Anderson

    Pages 193-221

13. Food Intake Regulation and Fiber

    • Kenneth W. Heaton

    Pages 223-238

14. Dietary Fiber and Mineral Absorption

    • W. P. T. James

    Pages 239-259

15. Sources and Intakes of Dietary Fiber in Man

    • Sheila Bingham, John H. Cummings

    Pages 261-284

16. Back Matter

    Pages 295-299

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Dietary therapy has always been important to medical practice even if it has more often been sacramental than physiological in effect. "You are what you eat" meant a lot to primitive tribes whose new leader had to eat part of his predecessor, and giving diets brought out the priest in the physician even if he or she had heard that "nothing that enters into a man defiles a man. " What people eat began to take on new meaning, however, a generation ago when Schoenheimer and others made clear that body fat and muscle protein were not the sluggish unchanging masses they had appeared but instead were store­ houses of energy and material influenced by food, activity, and metabolic pro­ cesses. Fiber, or residue as it was then still called, however, seemed unimpor­ tant; even the gastroenterologist concerned with keeping the bowels open by three cooked fruits, three cooked vegetables, and twelve glasses of water each day sometimes felt like a shaman if his cure for constipation worked. Nobody any longer read Arbuthnot Lane's charming Victorian book, The Way Out, which placed the blame for most human ailments on constipation; Lane even removed the bowel to cure the costive ills. Burkitt revived a scientific interest in fiber and the possible connection between diet. constipation, and many physical disorders by observing the vol­ ume and frequency of stools on an African diet and on an English diet.

• cancer
• colon
• dietary fiber
• energy
• fat
• gastroenterology
• medical practice
• muscle
• obesity
• protein
• small intestine
• therapy
• water

• Syntex Research, Palo Alto, USA

  Gene A. Spiller

• University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

  Ruth McPherson Kay

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