This kind of fiber kills appetite

If you’re trying to lose excess fat but can’t quite overcome hunger and cravings, you can help your body out by eating the right kind of fiber. But it’s not about soluble vs insoluble fiber, as you’ll see in a minute.

A team of European researchers have found that eating foods high in this certain kind of dietary fiber leads the bacteria in your intestines to release large amounts of a molecule called acetate. When the acetate enters the bloodstream and travels to the brain, it stops hunger.

Modern food processing has given us cheap, energy-dense foods that are generally high in refined sugars and fats but low in fiber in general.

How low? Studies show that the Paleo diet would have given you more than 100 grams a day. Today we might get 20 grams of any kind of fiber if we’re lucky.

Also, much of the fiber in the modern diet is cellulose. Instead, what you want to eat are inulin fibers, which are fermentable by the flora in your gut. The fermentation is what produces the acetate to suppress appetite.

Natural sources of inulin fiber are chicory root, the allium vegetables (onions, garlic), asparagus, the Jerusalem artichoke, and bananas. Yes, bananas seemingly have a bit of sugar in them, but their inulin makes them very slow to digest, which means bananas along with these other vegetables have very little effect on blood sugar.