AIBU to doubt only 4 per cent of adults get enough fibre?

[Anonnewbie]

To think that the recommended 30g of fibre per day isn't that hard to achieve for most people and be confused by the stats I keep seeing recently that 96% of UK adults get less than this?

Is it 96% don't meet it EVERY day, because that seems reasonable. Or don't average over 30g, which I think is pretty bad. But I'm realising as I type I should Google that question

My real question is how much fibre did you eat today? I just put it into chat gpt by typing out my food for today and despite being horrified by today's diet (1 piece of fruit, a few veg, way too much pastry and cheese, and quite a lot of Easter egg...saved by half a tin of beans), it estimated 37g. I asked it for a breakdown of that and the calculations seemed correct within reason as I'm not going to start weighing etc.

I would have guessed I was above average due to eating plenty of veg and home cooked meals, but cant believe I would be in the top 4% of fibre eaters in the country.... What do you think?

I actually just checked the white bread I usually use for sandwiches which I assumed to have basically no fibre but its actually got almost the same amount as the whole grain carrot bread rolls. One sandwich from the white bread gives 4g of fibre which is more than double that I expected! Must be from the psyllium added to it. The brown bread version of the same bread only has one more gram of fibre.

Unfortunately, there is a massive rise in early bowel cancers in young people (most of whom are not exactly eating a diet rich in fruit, vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds, and wholegrains; processed food is low in fibre).

I had a bit of a dive in to this online (proper medical websites, not AI) and it seems you need 15g of fibre per 1000 calories you consume. I’m a small person so only need about 1500-1600 cals per day depending on activity levels, to maintain weight. So it would be 30g max for me, more like 25g. If I ate 2000 cals a day I’d need to go to the gym daily to burn the excess (I wear a Fitbit and used to use myfitnesspal so am pretty aware of my calorie needs. I eat a 99% wholefood/upf free diet.

This makes no sense to me. Calories are about energy your body burns to function. Fibre isn’t related to that at all. Fibre helps your bowel to flow waste out of the 25ft worth of intestine everyone has wrapped up in their body.

What the what the! I don't think so. It has nothing to do with calorie intake.

Well, they have the same information at their finger tips as the rest of us. You can only police what goes into your own body. There are so many opportunities for people to buy and eat on the hop these days. You don't know what you're eating if most of your nutrition comes from food prepared outside the home.

When People say this I think it demonstrates there isnt that much knowledge, even amongst those who claim to have superior understanding.
There is no reason food outside the home is low fibre- in fact Plenty of processed and convenience foods are high in fibre.

”You don't know what you're eating if most of your nutrition comes from food prepared outside the home.”

if I buy a sandwich from pret how do I not know what I’m eating? Why can’t I accurately gauge the level of fibre in it? There isn’t some secret to it, it’s a sandwich.

Yes well I got all excited when I read that sort of information in the past as well, as my fibre usually hovers at around 20g due to my calorie intake and volume restrictions....however quite a knowledable fibre person on here answered this on some other threads about fibre and its nothing to do with what size you are, what you weigh, what you eat, calories taken in, the research says that adults should really have 30g of fibre a day as this is the level at which the risk of various cancers reduce.

Decided to calculate today, based on the nutritional information on the packaging (or in the case of fruit, what google tells me) and then calculating from there based on my portion size (rather than using an app, because I can't be arsed with that) and today I had 23.1g of fibre, which is better than I expected but I was consciously trying to increase my fibre intake so I suspect on normal days it'll be at least a few grams less.

I think I do ok most days but probably not quite 30g. There are plenty of oats, fruit, veg, nuts, beans and lentils in my diet but probably not enough wholegrains and beans/lentils are not every day. To eat 30g across 3 meals and snacks takes a concerted effort, where eating say 20g is probably quite easy to do.

It sounds low but then I am in some weighloss groups where people really struggle to hit fibre so maybe not all that surprising. Lots of people don’t get enough veg/fruit/wholegtains.

I am usually on or above target for fibre when I track. I have just put today’s food into chat gtp and it estimates 30g. Being vegan helps.

Today
morrisons cafe vegan breakfast
alpro protein yoghurt
blueberries
flat bread
veg curry
oat milk in tea/coffee

I would be shocked if that was 30g

I had today:

-3 slices vegan sourdough pizza, homemade with olives, tomatos, caramelised onions and peppers
-white tortilla wrap with hummus, picked beetroot, grated carrots (with skin on)
-marinated tofu steaks with bamboo shoot, mushrooms and courgette stirfry and white rice with peas and sweetcorn mixed in.

The oinly thing I consciously chose for the fibre was the hummus and deliberately leaving the skin on the carrots. I'd be surprised though if it added up to 30 gm.

It was a very tasty eating day though!

I've asked AI to help me track the last couple of days and you're right, I'm not meeting NHS guidelines, despite eating 'healthily' (if you ignore having waaayyy too much Easter egg on top!). I could do if I swapped out some of the dairy for fruit but everyone bangs on about protein these days?

Exactly, as I always say, lets hear the portion sizes in grams and do the maths

I have just put my food for the day into my tracker and it comes out at 40g fibre.
22 breakfast
2 lunch
14 dinner
2 snacks

🤷🏻‍♀️

in fact Plenty of processed and convenience foods are high in fibre.

Bollocks.

What did you have, out of interest?

its not bollocks at all. See graze oat bites- 5g. Big Mac- 4g. more than most fruit and veg per portion. What about brown bread? cereals? Microwave rice? Mccains jacket potatoes. Oven chips. BAKED BEANS?!

Breakfast was a Morrisons cafe vegan breakfast - 2 sausages. 1 hash brown, mushrooms, tomatoes, beans. Wholemeal toast and avocado.

Lunch was a protein yogurt and blueberries.

Dinner was a flatbread and veg curry. The curry had mushrooms, peppers, onions, asparagus, broccoli, tinned and fresh tomatoes, curry powder and alpro cream. I had a side of broccoli.

Snacks were oat milk and wine!

I did guess the weights today but am a long term tracker so won’t be massively out. Couldn’t weigh stuff at breakfast and the curry was homemade but from the freezer.

Well, you could just fill up on Metamucil with a touch of processed orange juice several times a day.

The point of getting more fibre in the diet is not to go out and eat a lot of sawdust, it's to give the "bugs" in the microbiome decent food to digest and process and produce healthy byproducts for your brain and so on, and to allow proper working of the large intestine. It's to give you, along with the fibre, the phytonutrients found in fruit and vegetables, etc.

Or you could have a mix of foods you take pleasure eating as part of a balanced enjoyable diet.

I wasdn't seriously suggesting anyone just takes bulk Metamucil. Other than that I am not sure why you are quoting me to make your "obvious" point.

The problem is that nowadays - judging by what I see in trolleys in the supermarket and what people post on MN threads - people imagine they are already eating a "balanced diet" when it is a diet of fast food, processed food, and low in fruits and vegetables and wholegrains, etc etc.

Exactly. You can't tell from texture. I mentioned it to someone irl and they said berries have more surface area and therefore cell walls.

However even then I can eat a lot of courgette but not many berries (size and price).

If the education is lacking, people will keep underrating fibre

I've borrowed Tim Spector's cookbook from the library, and lo, he says 95% of people are eating inadequate amounts of fibre. He suggests 30 - 50 grams a day! He says most people in the UK and US are getting less than 20 grams.