New, from the culture that brought us the high-fat ketogenic diet, the carb-unfriendly Atkins diet, and the amino acid-obsessed high-protein craze, comes the latest (and final) macronutrient fetish promising weight loss, heart health, disease prevention, and a shiny coat: fibermaxxing!

The hashtag has exploded on social media, with health influencers extolling the benefits of biohacking dietary fiber. Consumer goods makers are introducing it into soft drinks, cookies and coffee creamers, the same way they did with proteins earlier this year. People watch their digestive tract like it’s the Dow Jones. A nutrient previously associated with octogenarian irregularity and Saturday night live The sketches now have a crazy aura.

But is fibermaxxing really a legitimate nutritional strategy?

“What people don’t understand when they follow these trends is that there’s no one thing that can fix everything,” says Dr. Sunana Sohi, MD, a gastroenterologist in Louisville, Kentucky. “A healthy lifestyle is made up of much more than simply maximizing a macronutrient.”

That’s not a “no.” But before you start shoving psyllium husk down your throat like it’s an old rifle, it’s important to know what Fibermaxxing does well and what it doesn’t, especially since the consequences can mean the difference between surviving an entire movie or not.

What is Fibermaxxing?

A relatively new movement, both cultural and intestinal: Fibermaxxing involves introducing destabilizing amounts of fiber into the diet, often in “stealth” ways that convert low-fiber foods into wire-woven nutrients. For example, influencers at Fibermaxxing suggest adding chia or flax seeds to bowls of yogurt, smoothies, or overnight oats, or swapping blended beans for heavy cream in soups.

Fiber is really the last macronutrient left, besides alcohol, for social media shine, and frankly, even TikTok would have a hard time selling travelers on the benefits of ethanolmaxxing. But these types of trends allow those who follow them to turn off their brains and follow a simple script.

“It’s something we’ve been saying forever,” says Dr. Rabia De Latour, MD, associate professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine and director of endoscopy at Bellevue Hospital. “So when you put a hashtag in front of it, if it can reach more people, that’s great.”

Dr. Sohi agrees. “We’ve recommended the same things over and over again, but maybe sometimes they need to be different for people to really listen to them.”

So, it turns out that Fibermaxxing is little more than the gastroenterological guidance we’ve received from experts for generations. Of course, anything that can be taken too far, unsurprisingly, will be, which is why outrageous recommendations are also made in the name of Fibermaxxing. Some influencers have gamified their fiber consumption, increasing gram count as a high score on Ms. Pac-Man.

Dry extraction, for example, encourages people to put supplements like Metamucil directly into their mouths, a practice that carries a risk of choking and even suffocation. Meanwhile, some stalwarts recommend eating banana peels and even the woolly, almost bulletproof skin of the kiwi to score extra fiber points at the expense of your palates.

Why do we need fiber?

The primary function of dietary fiber is to enable proper digestion, which eventually converts what we eat into energy, muscle, bone, and, every Fibermaxx lover’s favorite, waste. Take two forms:

Insoluble fiber. Much the same fiber that goes out as goes in, gives structure or volume to solid waste, absorbing water and sweeping the digested pieces through the gastrointestinal tract.

Soluble fiber. With a gel-like consistency that makes food easier to move, soluble fiber slows digestion in the small intestine so nutrients can be absorbed and feeds bacteria in the colon.

“Soluble fiber also helps us control sugar and cholesterol,” says Dr. De Latour. This is because slowing digestion moderates carbohydrate absorption, mitigating glucose spikes. In addition, soluble fiber binds to cholesterol-containing fats and acids and eliminates them with the stool.

The reason why fiber has not received the attention that other macronutrients require until now is because it is not caloric, so it does not convert into fat or muscle, the two tissues we associate with body composition and healthy weight. In fact, it is not stored in the body at all. Despite being classified as carbohydrates on nutritional labels, fiber is not a source of energy.

However, a high-fiber diet has four main benefits:

• Digestion: Fiber helps provide shape and mobility to digested food.
• Weight control: Fiber promotes satiety, moderating appetite.
• Healthy blood sugar: Fiber helps slow glucose absorption, preventing spikes.
• Heart health: Fiber helps cardiovascular function by binding to plaque-prone cholesterol.

How to try Fibermaxxing responsibly

You don’t need to chew on shag carpets or inhale sawdust to PR when consuming fiber. Pace yourself, emphasize proper sources, and hydrate to wisely increase the number of threads in your diet.

1. Start slowly

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recommends consuming 14 grams of fiber for every 1,000 calories of food you eat. The abbreviation is 25 grams per day for women and 38 grams for men, although if it were up to Dr. Sohi those goals would be even higher.

“The daily fiber recommendations are probably too low, but most people don’t even come close to meeting them,” he says.

In fact, the average American consumes only about two-thirds of the recommended amount of fiber per day. Which means, before you can max out, you have to take medicine.

“If you’re someone who consumes zero grams of fiber per day and you need to get to 25…don’t just go from zero to 25,” says Dr. De Latour. She recommends introducing five additional grams of fiber per day into your diet each week to avoid gastric upset.

2. Emphasize whole foods

Unrestricted Fibermaxxing welcomes fiber in all its forms, including powders, bars, supplements, drinks, gummies, starches, and extracts, but it should actually be limited.

“I don’t want to say there’s a right way and a wrong way, but there’s certainly a better way, and the best way is to get fiber from your diet rather than from foods artificially supplemented with fiber,” says Dr. Sohi.

Fiber is found almost exclusively in plant foods (vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, grains and seeds) and both Dr. Sohi and Dr. De Latour recommend consuming it in these forms.

“When foods intended to prolong shelf life are incorporated, which is what basically [constitutes] “If we eat a processed food and then add a lot of sugar to it, we can defeat the entire purpose of that food,” says Dr. De Latour.

Doctors also recommend consuming these plant foods in as much variety as possible.

“Just like you have your favorite foods, each of the bacteria in our gastrointestinal tract has their favorite foods. So, if you feed your gut with a diversity of plant fibers, your gut health thrives,” says Dr. Sohi.

She advises consuming 30 different types of plant sources each week.

“You hear terms like ‘eat the rainbow’ because if you eat a rainbow of foods, you get a variety of different plant fibers,” adds Dr. Sohi.

3. Eat these high-fiber foods

If you don’t know what to eat, Dr. De Latour admits some collective guilt.

“It’s not always people’s fault, because the medical community hasn’t always been the best resource for nutritional information,” he says. “There has always been a general recommendation to, quote, ‘eat healthier.’”

So let’s be specific. Incorporate the following foods with the highest fiber content (per 100g) from each of the categories below for a total of 30 different fiber sources per week.

4. Increase water intake

Fiber absorbs water, so the more you consume it, the more you will need to supplement with fluids. Experts generally recommend drinking half your body weight in ounces, so start there. If, after increasing your fiber intake, you notice uncomfortable gas, bloating, or constipation, drown it in water. Fiber and water are two consumables that are difficult to abuse.

Of course, as Drs. Sohi and De Latour point out that most of us don’t get even the basic amount of fiber recommended by the FDA, USDA, WHO, and every other qualified fiber influencer we used to simply call a gastrointestinal doctor.

“We have a problem in our country specifically where people are eating insufficient fiber in general,” says Dr. De Latour. “Most people don’t have enough on any given day.”

So focus on the 38g minimum for men and the 25g threshold for women before “maximize” enters your lexicon. Because in this case haste literally generates waste.

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