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Fibre is having a moment. It's the nutrient everyone's suddenly obsessed with, some people even 'fibermaxxing' — piling it onto every plate. The official UK target is 30 grams a day. The average Brit gets around 18. Tonight: what 30 grams actually looks like, and why the food beats the powder every time.
Start simple. A typical bowl of porridge, made with fifty grams of oats, carries around five grams of fibre. That's roughly a sixth of your daily target before you've left the house. Swap a sugary cereal for oats and you've quietly banked more fibre for less effort than almost anything else on this list.
Baked beans are unglamorous, but half a tin — about two hundred grams — carries around seven grams of fibre. That's more than two slices of wholemeal bread. Beans, lentils and chickpeas are some of the cheapest, easiest fibre sources on any UK shelf, and they don't need a wellness label to work.
A hearty bowl of cooked lentils, around a hundred and fifty grams, delivers roughly eight grams of fibre — more than most people get from an entire day of white bread and pasta. Swap half your usual mince for lentils in a bolognese or chilli and you barely notice the difference, except in the numbers.
An eighty gram portion of raspberries — a small handful — carries around three grams of fibre, more than double most other berries the same size. It's a reminder that when it comes to fruit, fibre isn't about how much you eat, it's about which fruit you reach for.
Two slices of wholemeal bread carry around six grams of fibre. The same two slices of white bread give you closer to two. Same sandwich, same calories roughly, three times the fibre — simply by choosing the darker loaf. It's one of the easiest swaps on this entire programme.
Fibre supplements like psyllium husk can help, typically adding around five grams a dose. But whole foods bring fibre bundled with water, resistant starch and plant compounds your gut bacteria actually ferment — something isolated powders can't fully replicate. Large nutrition reviews consistently find food-based fibre outperforms supplements for gut and metabolic health.
Start your transformation — try SugarCoach free, then £2.99/weekGeneral lifestyle education, not medical advice — personal medical decisions belong with your GP or pharmacist.