“Four Strong Winds” Ian Tyson wrote, meaning, I suppose, the points of the compass. My father had a fifth: his own. “I’ve got the winds,” he would say shortly before or after sharing. We couldn’t place blame; he wasn’t well. Blame is a wasted sentiment anyway. A good toot is one of life’s more reliable, if passing, satisfactions. “Better to let it out and bear the shame than hold it in and bear the pain,” a friend used to say.
Life is definitely breezier around here since my nutritionist recommended I consume a half cup of Bran Buds daily. They’re packaged by the Kellogg cereal folks, whose website claims that psyllium fibre, the noticeably active ingredient, can reduce bad cholesterol, helping to reduce risk of heart disease. More to the point, the fibre helps manage blood glucose levels and body weight, the latter by increasing satiety. That’s important for diabetics like me. I like that word: “satiety.”
The effect is achieved with mucilage, a somewhat less delightful word. In past experience that’s the stuff we used to stick paper together in grade-school art classes. I thought they made it from knackered horses, but apparently the stuff is found in the seed shells of plants native to Asia. It absorbs water, bulking up to ten times its dry size, starting a rush through the intestines and sweeping along lots of the other things found down there. I am now anecdotal evidence of this, and can attest also that it does generate “the winds.”
The water-soluble fibre has been used for some time in the treatment of constipation and as a binding agent in foods such as ice-cream. There’s more on that in an article at Wikipedia if you’re interested, but now that psyllium fibre is on grocery store shelves in cardboard boxes with happy, smiling faces on the outside, you can shake some out for breakfast with either eye barely open.
I sprinkle about 1/3 cup of Bran Buds into my morning cereal bowl, with bran flakes, milk and walnuts. The old familiar rolled bran fibre melted into a disagreeable mush with the first splash of milk, but these little budders hold their own, adding a slightly sweet flavour and crunchy texture to salads, soups, stews, casseroles, yogurt smoothies, even sandwiches. Kellogg suggests baking them into muffins, cookies and bread and adding them to meat loaf and hamburger patties. Well, they would, but really it sounds worth a try. In addition to the health benefits Bran Buds are a versatile and appetizing ingredient: Food, with occasional music.
