DIETARY FIBRE IN NUTRITION AND HEALTH: THE NIGERIAN EXPERIENCE

Dietary fibre (DF) is an important component of plant foods and plays a significant role in health and nutrition. This paper reviews the analytical methods of dietary fibre determination, their short comings and possible improvement on the methods. Regression equations for the conversion of crude fibre (CF) and neutral detergent fibre (NDF) to DF were also reported. Nigeria and most of the developing countries of the world used to depend on plant foods, which are rich in fibre. However, rural-urban migration has deprived the farms of the much needed manpower and has led to the shortage of farm produce in the urban area. This has led to a change in the dietary habit in favour of refined foods. This paper also presents information on the Nigerian situation from different aspects. The contribution of plant foods rich in dietary fibre to the Nigerian diets in the 1960s is presented and compared to the current dietary fibre intake. The shift is then linked to increase in the incidence of dietary related diseases such as colon cancer, type II diabetes and cardiac diseases in Nigeria. The information so far in the literature show that ingestion of DF through the consumption of plant foods could go a long way in preventing or helping people with some medical conditions most especially Type 2 diabetes and colon cancer. Caution should be exercised in the promotion of an unbridled intake of dietary fibre especially in the developing countries because of its potential to reduce protein digestibility and making mineral elements unavailable. The results on the correlation between each of CF and NDF with DF revealed strong correlation coefficients (R2) of 0.901 and 0.984, for CF and NDF, respectively. Keywords: Dietary fibre. Nutrition Therapy