Good old-fashioned fibre (Jordans Natural Wheat Bran)

Member Name: Tracy_1127

Product:	Jordans Natural Wheat Bran
Date:	11/11/08 (139 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: inexpensive, versatile, works

Disadvantages: cannot be eaten dry, need to drink plenty of water

In my recent quest to get more fibre in my diet I started thinking back to the good old-fashioned method of eating bran. When I searched online for bran google produced Jordan's Wheat Bran for sale at a variety of places so I chose to buy from www.goodnessdirect.co.uk as they were selling 375g bags for £1.03 plus p&p.

The bran arrived a couple of days later and when I opened the bag I was met with a nutty aroma and lots of little flakes. Exactly as I expected. I read the packet and it stated that a tablespoon is 7g in weight and contains 3.1g of fibre, 13 calories, 0.4g of fat and not much else so this sounded ideal.

Wheat bran is basically the outer layer of wheat that is removed in processing for white flour etc and cannot be digested so has to turn into fibre. The only people who can't eat this are those with a wheat allergy and there is oat bran and psyllium husk for those people but this review is about Wheat Bran.

I started pondering what I could do with the bran, I initially added it to cereal in the mornings and it was fine, then I added some to some dumplings I made and tried them out on my partner who didn't even notice! I've since added it to chunky soups, egg mayonnaise sandwiches, found a recipe online for bran muffins and tried those (yummy!) and sprinkled some on top of bananas topped with yoghurt. Basically you can add it to anything that has moisture.

You can add bran to most baking and cooking and if you search online there are a number of recipes containing bran to try out.

It just has a slightly nutty flavour, much the same as bran flakes and doesn't interfere with the taste of meals excessively but I can taste it. My partner it seems can't though!

You should start with one tablespoon and increase the amount as you get used to it but I've found one tablespoon is perfectly adequate for me and improves transit time just as it should.

The only stipulation with bran is you must drink plenty of water. If you don't the bran absorbs many times it's own weight in water from your body and has the opposte effect to what you hope to achieve so add a couple more glasses of water to your diet if you add bran.

The bag is exactly as the picture above and I chopped a corner off so I could get a spoon in there and use a clothes peg to keep it closed. It has a recipe on the back where you can use the bran too. It must be stored somewhere cool and dry and has a good couple of years on it before it goes out of date.

I've had the first bag open for a few weeks now and still have some left so it lasts a while too and at £1.03 a bag it's very inexpensive. If anyone has read my fibresure review and then read this one it just goes to show previous generations knew what they were doing, no inventing powdered fibre for them just stick to the real stuff and it works!

Highly recommended for extra fibre.

Summary: Recommended