What I know so far: 2 types, soluble and, The Other Kind. Soluble absorbs water from your colon and turns into a gel that does…what specific sort of fiber magic? The Other Kind as I understand it is more mechanical, like physically pushing & scraping stuff around in your tubes.
That more or less right? And does chopping up The Other Kind like in a blender mess it up the same way chopping up a broom makes it less effective for doing broom things? I’m assuming normal blending would have no meaningful impact on soluble.
And, for that matter, how does having a lot of indigestible bulk in the tubes help keep things moving along? Intuitively, you’d expect that to result in clogs, exactly opposite of how it works.
Bulk? Well, why does swallowing bulk cause it to travel down your esophagus? You are not consciously trying to move it, once it gets clear of your tonsils. You esophagus naturally wants to transport the bulk to your stomach. Similarly, if your intestines contain bulk, they naturally want to move it along, at first to extract whatever food value they can in the small intestine, then to draw water out in the large intestine. Not keeping enough bulk moving through deprives your gut of the exercise it needs to keep in shape (it is possible with over-use to become addicted to enemas as they make your colon lazy).
Chopping up fiber in a blender does not matter because you are going to macerate it in your mouth before swallowing. The metaphor is less a broom than a garbage can that dumps when it fills up. For most foods what goes in the garbage can is just the waste produced by digestion. For fiber it fills the garbage can up so it is emptied more regularly. So the volume is what matters and not the dimensions.
RN here, and soluble fibre draws water into the colon and the insouble kind has more of a scrub brush effect. It mainly has bran or cellulose in it that keeps it from being fully digestible. But even broccoli puree is fibre.
Cite: I have changed way more adult diapers in my life than baby ones, even though I was a stay home mom until my son was nearly 2.