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These days, it\u2019s hard to step foot in a grocery store without being confronted with a slew of protein-enhanced products<\/a>. But in the wake of the carnivore diet<\/a> and endless cottage-cheese recipes<\/a>, a new macro is starting to get more airtime. \u201cRespectfully, you should be trying harder to hit your fiber target, not your protein target,\u201d warned one viral TikTok<\/a> earlier this year. Soon, people on the app were talking about \u201cfibermaxxing<\/a>,\u201d and influencers started gushing about the benefits of chia-seed pudding<\/a> and sharing tips to get 50 grams of fiber a day<\/a>. Unlike protein, fiber is the macronutrient the vast majority of Americans actually don\u2019t eat enough of. Women generally need about 25 grams a day,<\/a> but most of us eat around half that much<\/a>. TikTok says prioritizing fiber will keep you full longer<\/a>, snatch your waist<\/a>, and reduce your risk of colon cancer<\/a>.<\/p>\n For Jeni Britton, fiber helped her \u201cget to a place in my life where I could ask for a divorce.\u201d Five years ago, the company she founded, Jeni\u2019s Ice Cream, was her whole life. She\u2019d been running the business for more than 15 years, but increasingly, she was feeling lost and exhausted. She started going for long walks, hiking near the Appalachian Mountains outside of her hometown of Columbus, Ohio, and eating tons of blueberries. \u201cLike, a quart a day,\u201d she says. She quickly noticed that she felt better than usual \u2014\u00a0radically better. She suddenly had more energy; for the first time in her life, she started running in the woods. She dropped 20 pounds without much effort. Her skin looked better, her face less puffy. \u201cFriends told me I was reverse aging,\u201d says Britton, who is 52. \u201cI just started to feel alive again,\u201d she says. Her husband \u2014 with whom she shares two teenage children \u2014\u00a0is a \u201cwonderful human being,\u201d but they\u2019d grown apart over the years. Eating more fiber helped her feel like herself again, and she realized it was time to make some big changes.<\/p>\n The way Britton tells it, she accidentally stumbled on the secret to health and well-being. Nourishing her gut microbiome with plants helped her think more clearly. Eating more fiber would help America, \u201cas a country,\u201d restore its sense of hope, she says. \u201cI know it almost starts to sound woo-woo or like a miracle drug, but \u2026\u201d she pauses, \u201cit kind of is.\u201d She decided it was time to step away from her career in ice cream and leave Ohio for New York. In January, she launched Floura<\/a>, a line of fruit bars in flavors like \u201cblueberry matcha\u201d and \u201cmango cardamom\u201d that promise half your daily fiber. The first batch sold out in two days.<\/p>\n The bars are made from \u201cupcycled fruit\u201d \u2014\u00a0leftover trimmings from a produce-processing plant in New Jersey that supplies fresh-cut fruit for stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joe\u2019s. Each bar contains 12 different plants, including fermented watermelon rinds, apple paste (made from the cores left over from bags of Mott\u2019s sliced apples, \u201clike the ones they use in Happy Meals,\u201d Britton says), almonds, puffed quinoa, <\/strong>and chicory root. As far as bars go, they actually taste pretty good \u2014\u00a0somewhere between a fruit leather and the inside of a Fig Newton.<\/p>\n When I visit Britton\u2019s apartment, which she\u2019s subletting from a friend on the Lower East Side, she starts cutting up an Asian pear and loading the pieces into a small blue plastic chopper. \u201cI dated a guy in Berlin who turned me on to this little chopper, and now I use it all the time,\u201d she says. Most days, her first meal of the day is a bowl of bircher muesli, which she makes with sheep\u2019s-milk yogurt mixed with oats, flax, chia seeds, grated apples and pears, walnuts, pepitas, coconut, cardamom, and a few slices of underripe banana (\u201cWhen it\u2019s still a little green, it has more fiber,\u201d she says). It\u2019s a recipe she created with her gut microbiome in mind. \u201cI went on ChatGPT and I asked it to tell me every single fiber that I\u2019m using, and which specific microbes it\u2019s feeding, because there are so many different ones, and they can affect your brain activity, or energy, hormones, skin \u2026 even things like optimism and hope.\u201d For optimal gut health, she tries to eat 30 different plants a week.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not a health nut by any means,\u201d Britton says. \u201cI don\u2019t work out. I don\u2019t go to the gym.\u201d She\u2019s skeptical of supplements, though she recently started taking vitamin D after \u201creading some studies.\u201d She doesn\u2019t track macros, and she still eats a lot of ice cream \u2014\u00a0her favorite Jeni\u2019s flavor is Buttercream Birthday Cake. But she\u2019s convinced that fiber deficiency is the root of many of our problems. \u201cOur mission is really to reverse chronic illnesses,\u201d she says. Though she thinks MAHA\u2019s focus on food dyes<\/a> is misguided, she agrees that a reckoning with the \u201cindustrial food system\u201d is long overdue. Floura\u2019s ads play up the fact that they\u2019re seed-oil free. \u201cThere\u2019s so much science that\u2019s already out there,\u201d she says, before explaining that she thinks that her microbiome being out of balance could have caused her children\u2019s autism. Really? I ask. \u201cI was working too much, eating too much sugar,\u201d she says. \u201cI do think there was something \u2026\u201d she trails off. \u201cI don\u2019t know. It could also be genetic.\u201d (While some studies<\/a> have found that eating a diet high in fruits, vegetables, fish, nuts, and whole grains in pregnancy is associated with a lower risk of autism spectrum disorders, there is no definitive evidence that a mother\u2019s diet causes autism, which experts believe is typically the result of a complex mix of genetic and environmental factors.)<\/p>\n When many people think of fiber, they think of Metamucil,\u00a0which, as a gloopy powder mixed with water to help keep you regular, is probably the most unsexy supplement on the market. Britton says that Gen Z doesn\u2019t have the same baggage. While she initially assumed Floura\u2019s customer base would be the menopause crowd, so far, its fans have skewed younger. From talking with her 18-year-old daughter, Britton has gleaned that today\u2019s young people are \u201cobsessed with bloating and pooping.\u201d She predicts that grocery stores will soon be full of fiber-enhanced products, like Olipop<\/a> and a \u201cdaily fiber veggie pouch\u201d known as Liquid Salad<\/a>. \u201cAll the VCs are very interested,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely taking off.\u201d<\/p>\n The hype around fiber sometimes seems too good to be true \u2014\u00a0but the dietitians I spoke with generally agreed that, if you haven\u2019t been eating enough, adding more plants to your diet will help you feel better. \u201cI kind of love that fiber hired protein\u2019s PR team,\u201d says Clara Nosek, a registered dietitian-nutritionist who runs the Instagram account @yourdietianbff<\/a>. In addition to making it easier to poop, fiber also slows down digestion of carbs, helping to regulate blood sugar, Nosek says. It can help lower cholesterol, and eating enough really can reduce your risk of colorectal cancer<\/a>. There\u2019s some truth to the idea that eating more fiber can help with cravings and food noise, too. \u201cA really big benefit of fiber is increasing satiety and fullness,\u201d says Abbey Roberts<\/a>, a registered dietitian. \u201cIt can help so we\u2019re not feeling like we\u2019re constantly looking for the next thing to eat, and always feeling the need to snack, which can happen with a low-fiber diet.\u201d<\/p>\n But there\u2019s a reason the majority of us struggle to get enough fiber. Eating a diet that\u2019s high in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains requires time and money, and at $33 for a box of ten, Floura bars aren\u2019t cheap. There\u2019s also no getting around the fact that it\u2019s a processed food. Britton pushes back on this: \u201cThere\u2019s no ultraprocessed anything in Floura. We\u2019re sticklers on that,\u201d she says. \u201cEverything in this is made the way your great-great-great-grandmother would have made it.\u201d<\/p>\n When I ask Britton if she eats a Floura bar every day, she shakes her head. \u201cI eat this,\u201d she says, gesturing to her muesli. \u201cI get enough fiber. But I tell everybody, \u2018If you can\u2019t get enough fiber, eat a Floura bar.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n