Food Matters Live Podcast · Food Matters Live

The fibre gap - can the food industry bridge it?

·45 min·2 clips

Denmark doubled population fibre intake, yet consumers on low incomes did not change their intake at all.

1. Food Matters Live Podcast's session recorded at the Ascot event asks why fibre is so hard to get people to eat, using three 10-15 minute talks. 2. Anthony Zahra hosts and introduces Joe Sanderson, product director at Upfarm in Telford, Louise Dye, professor of nutrition and behaviour at the University of Sheffield, and Gary Frost, professor of nutrition and dietetics at Imperial College London. 3. Sanderson says that about 60% of people are not hitting dietary fibre requirements, while Dye notes that public health campaigns "haven't really persuaded" consumers, and that most adults fall below even the level recommended for children. 4. Sanderson explains that Upfarm uses an AI-powered harvester to collect the 70% of the broccoli plant left on the field, ferments the stem to manage listeria risk, splits income with farmers, and uses "old school" processes borrowed from cheese, meat and brewing. 5. Dye describes Denmark's campaign, which doubled average fibre intake and trebled higher-fibre product choice, but left low-income consumers unchanged, and cites UK data of only half a gram more fibre for every £10k of income. 6. Dye reports that a Liverpool intervention gave 220 pupils four Jackson's of Yorkshire breads with 4.4 to 7 grams of fibre per 100g, that removing white bread led them to eat the high-fibre options for a year, and that attendance rose while teacher-rated difficulties fell. 7. Dye also covers the H3 bagel prototype with six grams of fibre (a fifth of daily intake) and a Leeds University test replacing 30% of the beef in lasagne with lentils, rated acceptable, which became the "Lentils for Life" resource. 8. Frost argues that the chemical definition of dietary fibre says nothing about physiology, and he asks whether the term means a single ingredient molecule or complex food structures. 9. Frost shows from a Lancet review that fibre increases stool weight and frequency but "does not stop people taking laxatives," and that his propionate-inulin ester needed over 30 grams of fibre-equivalent a day to affect appetite and took 15 years to reach EFSA approval. 10. Suited to food developers, nutrition researchers and public health professionals interested in fibre.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Food Matters Live Podcast