Inulin content of food calculation

[Guest guest]

I think that people are overestimating the inulin benefit of food

inulin sources in general, so I'll do the calculation here, starting

with garlic.

From my site, the table at the bottom of this page,

http://members.shaw.ca/duncancrow/inulin_prebiotic_probiotic.html

The inulin content of garlic is 9%-16% (dry weight) so for this

calculation I'll assume the inulin content is on the high side of

average at 14%; it's likely to average a bit less.

If we're looking for 10 grams of inulin, we'd have to eat 71 grams of

garlic, dry weight.

The dry weight of garlic is an average of 42.5% of the wet weight, so

the fresh garlic weight of 167 grams would about do it.

I just got out of my refrigerator a bag of three prepackaged garlic

roots and weighed the three; the weight came to 143 grams.

So, we're looking at eating about 3 1/2 regular commercial garlic

bulbs, perhaps a bit more to allow for the part you don't eat, or 6

ounces of fresh chopped garlic daily, to approach the 10 grams of

inulin.

This is in addition to a regular diet that contributes the other 3

gams of inulin; remember, 12-15 grams is optimal.

Garlic is a decent inulin source; most foods contain much lower

inulin concentrations. Dandelion root would produce almost exactly

the same calculation. You'd need about twice that or 12 ounces of

Jerusalem artichoke root to get the 10 grams of inulin because it's

wetter so the dry weight is lower.

Again, that's a daily ration; you could eat it in two meals for best

results because bifidogenic properties threshold at about five grams

of inulin per dose according to the research.

For most people eating 6 ounces of garlic daily is unfeasible.

The comment that one would need to get several servings daily of high-

inulin foods is consistent with good dietary practice of eating lots

of vegetables, but the most popular vegetables have about the lowest

inulin content.

For example, even though onions are a fairly good inulin source you'd

need to eat 6 pounds of fresh peeled onions to get the 10 grams of

inulin. Not that it's unfeasible, but be aware that a LOT is

required, so high-inulin foods should be predominant in the diet, and

this is the difficult part because a lot of farmed foods just don't

have the inulin content we'd like. This is the reason fo our bowel

disorder epidemic in developed counties.

In a healthy bowel ecology, some of the easy carbs one eats also feed

probiotic bacteria in addition to the majority of organisms so the

amount of inulin can be kept down a little.

Duncan Crow