Fiber and Colorectal Cancer — Where to Now?

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Abstract
The idea that unrefined foods have an important influence on health goes back at least to Hippocrates. Writing in 1585, Stubs asked pointedly: “Doe we not see the poore man that eateth browne bread health fuller, stronger, fayrer complectioned and longer living than the other that fare daintelie every day?”1 Later, the notion that constipation was central to human disease gave rise to some quaint practices and a huge breakfast-cereal industry. By the mid-20th century, colorectal cancer was being blamed first, by Cleave, on an excess of sugar (“the saccharine disease”)2 and later, by Burkitt, on a deficiency of fiber. . . .