I don't know, a lot of people (usually the detox bunch) claim this is healthy... I just don't buy it. The colon is designed to purge out feces and effectively cleanse itself (with the help of dietary fibre). Does it need anymore cleansing?
Your other advice, however, I do agree with 100%.
To me, it seems that dried figs (and dried prunes) are even better for healthy intestines.
I also agree that drugs in general do not agree well with the bowels.
As we know, things do not always work as they are designed, or we do not always put the input it requires to function well. It's certainly ambitious to think that everything and anything you place in your mouth will come out a neat little fecal package and all, most especially if you eat a lot of refined products. The body is made very well, but it isn't magical.
My cousin is an oncologist and talks a lot about colons these days, as her mentor has just died of colon cancer. There is a lot of heavy putrefied material left in many digestive tracts.
When you have had a history of eating things that could have stopped up and putrefied in your tract, eating some dietary fiber can help of course. But sometimes these things adhere, and the digested food squeezes by them.
I myself have seen these chunks of black come out in the tubes of a colonic center from my boyfriend's treatments. They decreased with every session, and eventually the stuff coming out stopped being so dark and chunky. He has not changed his diet at all, but those never recurred. Of course I did not remove them and examine them, but I can draw some hypothesis from the experience.
There is also a good amount of mucus in (think of thickened saliva after eating something overly refined and sweet, and think this goes all through your digestive tract). While your body can deal with small amounts, typically we humans reach a certain type of diet where the body needs extra help. Teas, greens, hot water help. Think of a sink with gunk lining it.
(I often observe my dog to have much mucus in his stool when I leave him with my stepmother, who feeds him a lot of carbs to "fill him up". He gets insane bad breath. To remedy this, we feed a lot of bones which probably are his fiber counterpart. His stool normalizes and his breath stops stanking.)