A quick note before the numbers. This is a picture, not a plan, and it is certainly not something to count.
The point of laying it out is that the target sounds harder than the food. Twenty eight grams reads like a project. It is mostly ordinary meals with one or two additions.
A day that gets there without trying
Breakfast: porridge made with rolled oats, a handful of berries, a tablespoon of chia. Around 12g.
Lunch: a sandwich on grainy bread with whatever is in it, and a pear afterwards. Around 8g.
Dinner: pasta or rice with half a tin of lentils stirred through and whatever vegetables are in the fridge. Around 10g.
That is 30g, and nothing on that list is unusual or expensive. The additions responsible are the chia, the pear skin and the lentils.
Another version, if porridge is not your thing
Breakfast: two pieces of grainy toast with avocado. Around 8g.
Lunch: leftovers with a cup of frozen peas tipped through. Around 10g.
Dinner: a curry with chickpeas, served on barley instead of rice, with a side of greens. Around 14g.
That is 32g, and again it is mostly the additions rather than a different way of eating.
The foods doing the most work
If you look at where the grams actually come from, it is a fairly short list.
Legumes are the standout. A cup of cooked lentils is around 7 to 8g, which is a third of a day in one ingredient.
Then wholegrains, particularly barley and oats. Then seeds, especially chia and linseed. Then fruit and vegetables with skins on. Then nuts.
Notice that several of those also turn up on the list of where women tend to fall short on iron, calcium and magnesium. Legumes, wholegrains, nuts and seeds do more than one job, which is a reasonable argument for building meals around them.
Where fibre goes missing
Three habits account for most of the shortfall.
Peeling things. The skin carries a good share of the fibre in most fruit and vegetables.
Choosing white over wholegrain by default. Bread, rice and pasta all have a wholegrain version, and the difference is a couple of grams per serve, which adds up across a day.
Juicing rather than eating. Juice removes most of the fibre, which is why a glass of apple juice behaves quite differently in your body to an apple.
A note on bread
Wholemeal and wholegrain are not the same thing. Wholemeal is made from flour that includes the whole grain but is ground fine. Wholegrain contains visible pieces of grain and generally carries more fibre. Neither is bad, but if fibre is what you are after, look at the panel rather than the colour of the loaf. We wrote about reading that panel properly during our label series.
The takeaway: Twenty eight grams is roughly three ordinary meals with one fibre rich addition each. Legumes, oats, barley, chia, and fruit and vegetables with the skins on are the foods doing most of it. The three habits that cost you fibre without you noticing are peeling, defaulting to white, and juicing instead of eating.
The science behind this post:
- National Health and Medical Research Council. Nutrient Reference Values for Australia and New Zealand: Dietary Fibre. Suggested Dietary Target 28g per day for adult women. nrv.gov.au
- Food Standards Australia New Zealand. Australian Food Composition Database. Dietary fibre content of oats, barley, legumes, chia, avocado, fruit and vegetables. foodstandards.gov.au
- National Health and Medical Research Council. Australian Dietary Guidelines. Guidance on wholegrain cereal foods and on whole fruit in preference to juice. eatforhealth.gov.au