Fibre used to be the nutrient nobody talked about. Bran flakes, a vague note on a food label, something your gran mentioned. That’s changed fast. Fibre is turning up on menus, in supplement aisles, across the same social feeds that spent last year obsessing over protein. There’s already a name for it: fibremaxxing.
Before getting anywhere near whether that’s a good idea, it’s worth answering a more basic question. Why do high fibre foods actually matter? Most of the coverage jumps straight to the trend and skips this part entirely.
What Fibre Actually Does in Your Body
Fibre isn’t digested the way other carbohydrates are. It passes through your small intestine largely intact and reaches your large intestine still whole, where gut bacteria get to work on it. That fermentation process is the whole point — it’s what feeds your gut microbiome, the trillions of bacteria that do far more for your health than just digestion.
This connects directly to something already well established: the gut-brain axis, the two-way communication line between your gut and your nervous system. A healthier, more diverse gut microbiome is linked to better mood regulation and lower systemic inflammation. Fibre is one of the more direct ways to feed the gut and help the good bacteria thrive, rather than through supplements.
Fibre does plenty beyond digestion too. It slows how quickly sugar enters your bloodstream, which means steadier energy and fewer sharp hunger spikes a couple of hours after eating. It’s genuinely filling — soluble fibre (e.g. oats, black beans, apples or avocado) in particular expands in your stomach and keeps you full for longer. And higher fibre intake is consistently linked to better cardiovascular outcomes, partly through its effect on cholesterol.
The Gap Is Bigger Than Most People Realise
Here’s the part that makes the current trend genuinely worth paying attention to. UK adults are advised to eat 30 grams of fibre a day. According to the British Nutrition Foundation, the average adult gets nowhere near that — closer to 20 grams or less. Only around 4 in 100 adults actually hit the target.
That’s not a minor shortfall. Most people are eating roughly two-thirds of what’s recommended, and the vast majority aren’t close. Compare that to protein, where genuine deficiency is rare in the UK, most people already eat enough, even before the recent wave of protein everything. Fibre is the opposite situation entirely: a nutrient most of us are quietly short on, with real consequences, that’s only just starting to get the attention it needs.
So Should You “Fibremaxx”?
Not really — and this is where the trend and the evidence start to pull apart.
Fibremaxxing follows the exact same pattern as proteinmaxxing before it: pick a nutrient, track it obsessively, chase a number. It usually shows up as fibre supplements, powders stirred into drinks, bars engineered to hit a gram target. None of that is where the actual evidence points.
Fibre works because of variety, not volume from a single source. Different fibres feed different bacteria — oats, lentils, apples and broccoli aren’t interchangeable sources of “fibre,” they’re distinct fuel for distinct parts of your gut ecosystem. A diet that hits 30g entirely from one fortified bar a day is missing the actual mechanism that makes fibre useful in the first place. The research behind fibre and gut health has never been about a single number. It’s been about diversity of plant foods, something no supplement replicates.
What Actually Closes the Gap
None of this requires tracking anything. A handful of ordinary swaps and remembering to hydrate gets most people most of the way there.
Swap white for wholegrain wherever it’s easy. Bread, pasta, rice — the wholegrain versions carry several times the fibre of their refined equivalents, and for most people the taste difference is smaller than expected.
Keep the skin on. Potatoes, apples, cucumber — a meaningful share of a plant’s fibre sits in or just under the skin. Peeling it off is peeling away part of the point.
Make pulses a default, not an occasion. Lentils, chickpeas and beans are some of the most fibre-dense foods that exist, and they’re also among the cheapest. A tin of lentils costs a fraction of most “wellness” products marketed at the same goal.
Add seeds and grains without thinking about it. A spoonful of chia or flaxseed stirred into porridge or yoghurt adds several grams of fibre for almost no effort and barely changes the taste.
Build meals around plants first, protein second. Not instead of protein — alongside it. A plate built with vegetables, pulses and wholegrains as the base, with protein added rather than centred, tends to land closer to 30g without any conscious effort.
Drink plenty of water because fibre needs fluids to pass smoothly through the body.
If cooking with this pattern in mind sounds like a lot to figure out from scratch, a good Mediterranean-style recipe collection does a lot of the fibre and protein balancing for you — the Mediterranean pattern is naturally fibre-dense without ever framing itself that way. I also love these glass lidded containers for lunches, meal preps and leftovers.
The Other Kind of Access
There’s a version of this conversation that turns fibre into another premium wellness category — powders, engineered bars, supplement subscriptions, all priced like something aspirational. That’s the opposite of what the evidence actually supports.
Beans, lentils, oats, wholegrain bread — the foods doing the most genuine work here are also some of the cheapest things in the supermarket. Closing a nutrient gap this size doesn’t require spending more. In a lot of cases it costs less than what most people are already buying instead.
The Line Worth Remembering
Protein had its moment because it’s easy to market — a number, a claim, a badge on a pack. Fibre is having a quieter one, for a better reason: most people are genuinely short on it, and the fix has been sitting in the tinned goods aisle the whole time.
You don’t need to fibremaxx. You need a wider variety of plants on your plate, more often than not.
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