Fiber? I hardly know her!

AND NO I WILL NOT SPELL IT 'FIBRE'

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At the start of this month, many of the 2026 Ins/Outs posts foretold that protein would be supplanted by fiber as the it-nutrient, the sort of sage prognostication people like to do once something is already several years into the trend cycle.

And what is fiber, exactly?

Fiber is not a macronutrient. That’s very important. Remember the macronutrients? Protein, carbohydrates, lipids. Yes girls. No, dietary fiber comes from a subset of carbs that cannot be digested by your body and, together with water, is one of those things that is not a macro but you definitely need to have. Fiber—broken down most simply into soluble and insoluble types—is critical to your gastrointestinal health, from your gut biome to your bowels. Fiber intake helps you feel fuller longer, helps manage your blood sugar and cholesterol, and of course, helps keep you regular.

Most recent analysis shows that people aren’t getting nearly enough fiber. In the US, dietary guidelines (while they still exist) recommend 25 grams of fiber per day on a 2000 calorie diet, while the UK has upped that number to 30 grams. Research in both countries has shown that only 5-10% of adults are reaching these daily fiber recommendations. Yeesh.

There are lots of reasons for this, from meat overconsumption to the proliferation of processed foods (often low in fiber) to a general lack of variation in many diets. Dietary fiber intake is something which really benefits from diversity; the best high-fiber diets include a range of soluble and insoluble fibers from many sources. In essence, a diet rich in different fruits, vegetables, legumes, seeds, and grains.

The girls have BEEN fibermaxxing. The dense bean salad will be starting preschool soon!

But information overload has killed monoculture. There is no one “it” ingredient anymore. Paths are diverging in the woods. When I wrote about proteinmaxxing at the start of last year, I wrote:

It feels like everything is trending in every possible direction. On one hand, it seems like people who have been traditionally marginalized by diet culture are finding their own relationships to movement and nourishment that aren’t chained to getting thin or being jacked, and on the other hand there’s people eating raw beef for every meal and some of those people are the Government now. But whether they’re sneaking lentils into a cozy bowl of pasta or shoveling straight up cow into their mouths, everyone seems to be talking about protein.

Ultimately, much of the fibermaxxing content, like much of the proteinmaxxing content, comes across to me as obsessive. Any time someone starts talking to me in grams too much in a recipe video I have to go to my zen mind palace. Put the metric system down girl …

The Soda of it all

One of the most interesting aspects of fiber’s rise has been the explosion of fiber-forward soft drinks. Often made with chicory root or other similar sources of insoluble fiber, these “prebiotic” (a real term, I just think the brands are using it a little dishonestly) sodas have capitalized on our collective, justified fear that we’re not getting enough fiber.

In the summers of 2022 and 2023, Pete and I would do something called Gay Little Drink Time where we’d go to the Planet Organic—a joke store for joke items—on Commercial Street and procure the most obscene beverage three pounds could buy. The drinks chiller was lined with “prebiotic” sodas called things like “Fibe” and “Vibe” which is obviously excessive. At the time, I wrote these off as woke nonsense and continued my quest for the most discrete CBD beverage to consume at one’s workplace.

Despite living in the US cultural hegemon that is Online, I only get boots on the ground once or twice a year, resulting in a staccatoed experience of true American culture that always makes me feel like I just woke up from a coma. Sometimes you just have to nod along and then look up Shane Gillis on your phone in the bathroom later.

I had heard about Olipops via my phone at some point. The next time I was in the US, my friends told me that they’d tried them, yeah they’re pretty good. Each successive visit has seen the market grow.

Prior to my recent trip to New York, my friend Meghan sent me an ad for Shirley Temple Olipops. Yeah, we’d be cracking open some of those. I don’t want to do discourse but I love Shirley Temples.

Longtime readers will know that I find enormous comfort in the American grocery store. Sometimes you just need to put your food policy masters aside and marvel at a gigantic wall of different peanut butters.

Early in the week, Meghan procured us cans of another prebiotic Shirley Temple from one of the brands whose name is vaguely flora, I can’t remember which. A Dupe. This one was, admittedly, delicious. We spent the rest of the week each popping into whatever stores we came across in search of the original. Each time I stared at a new selection of near-identical prebiotic sodas, names all one degree off from each other, graphics just a hair different, flavors ever-so unlicensed, I felt a bit more insane. Wait, which one was I supposed to be looking for again? What shade of pink was it?

We finally found the Olipop Shirley Temples, three of which rang up to almost ten American Dollars. These were not as good as whatever the other ones were, presenting us with a nice life lesson.

The fibrous soda market has moved past increasingly baroque. It’s in some sort of nebulous, post-baroque space now.

I went through an adult soda phase in 2023 after not drinking soda for basically a decade. Wow, soda is very good. I grew up in a Dr Pepper household (complex soda-based nepo stuff with which I shan’t bore you) and refused Coca Cola out of principle, baring the occasional rum and, until that fateful summer. I got way too into drinking Coke (not diet) for a brief period that was very much not unlike Carrie smoking with Big until I snapped out of it and resumed my BDS lifestyle. Most sodas are reformulated in the United Kingdom under the Soft Drink Industry Levy (SDIL), which is good, but means that Dr Pepper isn’t the same. I recently drank a true one courtesy of American Airlines which felt amazing at 35,000 feet. Alas.

An explosion in lower-sugar, fiber-forward soft drinks definitely isn’t bad. You, my dear reader, know that I am not the type of person to sort food into ‘bad’ and ‘good’ categories, but sometimes you have to call a spade a spade. While sugar has been cultivated for centuries, the modern sugar industry—and our modern sugar consumption—is a product of chattel slavery. Sugar is one of many foodstuffs whose industry drove imperial conquest, military intervention, and government overthrow across the tropics where canes thrive, largely at the hands of the United States. The sugar industry paid for coronary heart disease research which shifted the blame away from dietary sugar, impacting decades of nutrition advice. It’s a hefty ‘controversy’ tab on the ole Wikipedia. Sugar sodas are a food media darling because, well, they’re yummy, and the sort of small treats that make up our lives. Reformulation interventions like the SDIL are easy targets for beautiful essays because they seem like menial joy-sucks in already difficult times, but sometimes you have to stop and think about whether you need to ride out for The Coca-Cola Company like that. The SDIL is actually a pretty good example of a supply-side tax which has passed very little onto consumers; it also funds the National School Breakfast Programme. Land of contrasts

Read Zac Jones-Gomez on sugar farming at Louisiana’s Angola Prison

No, it’s not bad that there are so many lower-sugar options for that 3:00 pm fizzy drink, fortified with things like insoluble fiber to boot. It’s a bit on the nose for American culture in particular, sure, very “Imagine a hamburger.”

It’s maybe bad that the marketing of these prebiotic sodas relies so heavily on “guilt-free” language and the idea of achieving health through sublimating our base desires. I’m wary of the idea that “good” soda companies can disrupt “bad” ones. It’s definitely annoying that they’re all named like that.

The fibrous soda boon feels like a natural outcome for poor fiber in our Bosch painting of a food system. The flattening of nutrient categories, the demonization of certain foods, the opacity of our agricultural system, all of these contribute to a world in which 30 grams of dietary fiber feels so daunting one can only hack it via Shirley Temple. But our need for dietary fiber presents us with the opportunity to eat some of the best things out there: apples and berries and peppers and pecans and yes, beans. And frozen peas! It is the nutritional requirement that most rewards beauty and flavor. How could that be a chore? 🫒