Food Sources of Prebiotics

For a long time, I had noticed that when I eat a lot of fruits and leafy green vegetables (especially veggies), I am less troubled by poor digestion and it is easier to move my bowels.  However, not all fruits and leafy greens have this beneficial effect; only selected high-fiber ones are prebiotics. When I travel and do not get enough fiber in my diet, I get constipated. Therefore, normally I would pop probiotic capsules to help with my constipation since the microscopic organisms aid digestion. It was only recently that I came across the term ‘Prebiotics’. On further investigation and reading up research done on the subject, the reason why probiotics and high fiber diet work makes sense to me. If we want our gut to be colonized by beneficial microbes, we have to provide them with the right diet to enable them to flourish.

Here is a list of food to encourage good probiotic growth:

·         Acacia Gums (Gum Arabic), guar gum, raw potato starch, slippery elm, locust bean gum.

·         Bran is the nutritious, fiber-rich outer casing of grains. Common sources are from wheat, oats, maize, rye, rice and barley. You can also get it from whole meal or unpolished grains.

·         Onions, garlic, leeks.

·         Jicama tuber, turnip, wild yam, beetroot, burdock, dahlia tuber.

·         Raw chicory root, rhubarb root, common black nightshade.

·         Raw dandelion Greens, sowthistle leaves, cabbage tree.

·         Spinach, wild spinach, cabbage.

·         Raw asparagus, raw Jerusalem artichokes, yacón, soy bean.

·         Banana, apple and citrus pectin.

·         Flax seed

·         Chlorella, agar-agar, blue agave plant.

·         Radish, carrot, tomato.

·         Beta glucans can be found in most mushrooms, active hexose correlated compound (AHCC), and colostrum (in milk).

Humans have developed a symbiotic relationship with certain microbes over hundreds of thousands of years of co-existence. We provide microbes with nutrition through the food we ingest. The microscopic workforce in our gut in turn releases nutrition from food that our system could not digest properly or not at all. Eating food with prebiotics ensures the beneficial microbes outnumber the harmful, toxin-producing ones.