Men's Health Philippines

Health

The Incredible Bulk

A berry a day keeps the colon at play.

If a rabbit doesn't eat enough high-fiber foods, its teeth may grow uncontrollably, piercing the roof of its mouth and knifing the base of its brain.

Your brain is safe, but we're not so sure about the rest of your body. Forgo the fiber and you extend an open invitation to several different cancers. You also raise your risk of diabetes and heart disease by up to 20 and 40 percent, respectively. And in the fate-worse-than-death category, you increase the odds that you'll end up fat and impotent. So while you may not die like a bunny rabbit, you won't be doing it like one, either.

Notice, we haven't even mentioned the c-word (constipation).

But even if you have the will to eat more fiber, you almost certainly don't have the way. Especially since the recommended daily dosage was recently raised from 25 to a throat-choking 38 grams. The obvious solution eating 19 slices of whole wheat bread a day isn't practical. What you need instead is subterfuge. Dietary deception. In other words, this plan for smuggling more roughage into your life.

At breakfast

Fill your juice glass with nectar instead of a watery juice from concentrate. Nectar is apricot, peach, pear, or papaya juice, mixed with fiber-rich pulp. It packs more than a gram (g) of fiber per eight-ounce glass.

Drop a whole orange into the blender to flavor your morning smoothie. (Uh, peel it first.) One orange has nearly 3 g more fiber than even the pulpiest orange juice.

Spice up your eggs. A third of a cup of chopped onion and a clove of garlic will add a gram of fiber to a couple of scrambled eggs. Or fold the eggs omelette-style over cup of cooked broccoli for two additional grams.

Heat up a bowl of oat bran instead of oatmeal; it has nearly 2 g more fiber. And add even more flavor and fiber by stirring in a quarter cup of raisins or chopped dates before nuking it.

Sprinkle toasted wheat germ over your favorite cold cereal, or stir a few spoonfuls into yogurt. Two tablespoons equals close to two extra grams of fiber.

Grab an Asian pear instead of the regular kind. They taste similar, but the Asian variety has significantly more fiber - 4 g per pear.

Buy spreadable fiber, a.k.a. almond butter, for your whole-wheat toast. Two tablespoons adds a couple of grams of fiber, along with a healthy dose of heart-protecting fats and vitamins like E.

Whip up a pack of hot-chocolate mix instead of a second cup of coffee. Most instant-cocoa mixes have up to 3 g fiber per cup.

At lunch

Hate whole wheat? Make your sandwiches with rye bread. One slice has almost 2 g fiber—twice the amount found in white bread.

Opt for burritos instead of tacos. Flour tortillas have more fiber than taco shells. Even better, make the burrito whole wheat for still more fiber per serving.

And order that burrito with meat and beans instead of meat alone. Half a cup of beans adds 6 g fiber to your meal.

Stow some microwavable soup in your desk for when you need to work through lunch. Lentil, chili with beans, ham-and-bean, and black-bean each have between 6 and 10 g fiber per cup.

Shower your pizza with oregano or basil. A teaspoon of either spice gives you an extra gram of fiber. Order it with mushrooms and you'll get one more.

Build your burger with a sesame-seed bun instead of the plain variety. Sesame seeds add half a gram of fiber per burger.

Order your dog with sauerkraut. Every quarter cup you pile on adds close to a gram of fiber to your frank.

Opt for burritos instead of tacos

In the afternoon

Pop a pack of light popcorn instead of popping open a bag of potato chips. There's 8 g fiber in every bag of popcorn.

Drink bottled chocolate milk, not white. The combination of the chocolate and the compounds needed to keep it suspended in the milk provides 3 g fiber in every 16 ounces.

Say nuts to candy bars. Bars with almondshave almost twice the fiber content of bars without.

Don't tell yourself you could have had a low-sodium V8. Have one. Unsalted V8 has 2 g fiber. The V8 that comes spiked with salt has half that amount.

Graze on trail mix instead of a granola bar. Most granola bars have only 1 g fiber, while trail mix with dried fruit has nearly 3.

At dinner

Toss ½ cup of chickpeas into a pot of your favorite soup. They'll take on the flavor of the soup and tack 6 g fiber onto your bottom line.

Swap a sweet potato for your standard spud. Sweet potatoes have 2 g more fiber per tuber than the typical variety. Not a fan? At least eat the skin of the regular potato. It alone has 1 g fiber.

Shake 'n' bake some fiber into your chicken by coating it with a mixture of one teaspoon paprika, one teaspoon thyme, two tablespoons ground flaxseed, and cup flour. You'll get 4 g fiber, thanks to the flaxseed.

Go wild when you make rice. Cup for cup, wild rice has three times the fiber of white.

Doctor your favorite jarred pasta sauce with cup of frozen chopped spinach. The spinach will adopt the flavor of the sauce and pad the fiber count by more than 2 g.

Prepare whole wheat or spinach pasta instead of the regular semolina kind. A cup of either has 5 g fiber.

Don't choose just any candy bar. Choose a nutcase.