U can eat it. Its just not particularly nutritious or paletable.
I still wonder why if we need more fiber in our diets we don’t just toss wood pulp in everything.
Apparently supplemented processed fiber gives you liver cancer though.
Tldr: Inulin bad.
I wonder how depression era sawdust bread would work though.
The study that your article references is a mouse study, so the relevance to humans is questionable.
In addition, fiber is shown to be beneficial to humans primarily when comparing the standard American diet to a high-fiber diet. This is likely because fiber is mostly non-digestable by humans (as we’ve lost the ability to digest fiber more than 2-million years ago unlike our closest living great-ape cousins), and acts as a physical barrier to the absorption of sugars and starches which also helps to lower insulin spikes.
If you do not eat a high-carb diet (such as a ketogenic diet), then eliminating the undigestable matter (i.e. fiber) from your diet is probably beneficial because you’ll be able to absorb more nutrients and get rid of constipation-related issues.