Cereal Fiber

Cereal fiber is dietary fiber that comes from cereal grains such as wheat, oats, rye, barley, rice, and maize. It is a source-based term rather than the name of one chemically uniform substance. Depending on the grain and its processing, cereal fiber can include different proportions of cell-wall carbohydrates and associated compounds, such as arabinoxylans, beta-glucans, cellulose, and resistant starch .¹

Like dietary fiber more broadly, cereal fiber consists mainly of carbohydrate polymers that are not fully digested and absorbed in the human small intestine. Different components can vary in solubility, viscosity, fermentability, and effects on food structure. For that reason, two foods with the same grams of cereal fiber do not necessarily contain the same fiber types or behave identically in the gastrointestinal tract .^1,2

Cereal fiber should not be treated as synonymous with whole grain. Whole-grain foods contain the bran, germ, and endosperm in their original proportions, whereas fiber can be isolated from grain fractions or added to foods. A refined-grain product can therefore contain added cereal-derived fiber without being a whole-grain food. The term is most useful when the source of dietary fiber matters, while the physiological properties depend on the specific fiber mixture .¹