“Just stir some Benefiber into your water.” 🤦♀️
Like most scrolling, I’m not sure how I ended up on this particular Instagram reel where a bunch of gastroenterologists were sharing tips on how to get more fiber in one’s diet.
Their consensus?
Hitting 25 grams a day (the minimum recommendation for women) is hard.
So just stir some Benefiber into your water bottle and you’re good to go.
Like a lot of things on social media, this advice isn’t helpful.
I actually have a lot to say about it.
But my goal is to always leave you with quick, actionable takeaways.
For this post, those are:
- Eating 25 grams of dietary fiber is pretty doable, even on a low roughage diet.
- Fiber supplements don’t replace the benefits of high-fiber foods.
- Not all fiber supplements are the same, and Benefiber isn’t the right choice for everyone.
Hitting 25 grams on a low roughage diet
I don’t love talking about fiber in grams. It makes eating feel like a math problem. (Just like I don’t love talking about soluble vs. insoluble fiber.)
But since that’s how the reel framed it, let’s stick with it.
Here’s what ~25 grams of fiber can look like on a low roughage diet. So this doesn’t even include raw vegetables, salads, fruits with thick skins or seeds, whole nuts, or popcorn.
Breakfast: Overnight oats: ½ cup rolled oats (4 g), ½ banana (2 g), 1 tablespoon natural peanut butter (1 g). ~ 7 g
Snack: 1 cup cantaloupe or honeydew. ~ 1.5 g
Lunch: Two slices sourdough toast (2 g), ½ avocado (5 g), scrambled eggs. ~ 7 g
Snack: Pita chips with 2 tablespoons creamy hummus. ~ 2 g
Dinner: Chicken or fish, 1 cup soft green beans (4 g), one skinless microwaved sweet potato (4 g). ~ 8 g
That’s already 25 grams of fiber. 🙌
And I haven’t even pulled out the blender to make one of my favorite low roughage, high fiber smoothies.
Plus, look at all the color in a day like that.
Ever heard the advice to eat the rainbow?
Beyond fiber, vitamins, and minerals, those colors represent polyphenols: naturally occurring compounds found only in plants.
Many polyphenols have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.
Foods rich in fiber and polyphenols help nourish the gut microbiome and support the intestinal barrier, two things that are especially relevant if you live with IBD.
Also, dietary patterns rich in a wide variety of high-fiber foods (ahem, plants) are consistently associated with lower risks of cardiovascular disease, stroke, colorectal cancer, and type 2 diabetes.
We simply don’t get all of those benefits from a scoop of isolated fiber.
Not all fiber supplements are created equal
The reel wasn’t wrong that Benefiber contains fiber.
But not all fibers are the same, and a fiber supplement is missing most of what whole foods have: polyphenols, vitamins, minerals, and more.
Benefiber is wheat dextrin, a non-viscous, highly fermentable fiber.
Because it’s not viscous (gel-forming), it doesn’t have the cholesterol-lowering or blood sugar benefits we see with fibers like psyllium. Yet those are key reasons why people reach for a fiber supplement in the first place.
Because it’s highly fermentable, it can also cause uncomfortable gas and bloating for some people.
Where it can help is diarrhea.
But, for someone who’s already constipated, it can make things worse.
If you or your patient is dealing with constipation, Benefiber is generally not the right choice.
As for feeding beneficial gut microbes, I’d much rather get fermentable fiber from food. The stuff both we and our microbes evolved alongside for millennia.
The takeaways
➡️ Eating 25 grams of fiber per day is doable without a supplement and without a lot of prep.
➡️ And getting that fiber from a wide variety of colorful plant foods is much better for overall health than relying on a supplement.
