Britain's Fibre Gap: Why the Fix Isn't a Powder, But What You Pour on Your Vegetables

Britain is having a fibre reckoning. A survey of 2,000 UK adults by the nutrition science company ZOE found the average adult eats just 16.4g of fibre a day — barely half the 30g the NHS recommends, with 90% of people unaware the target even exists. Across the Atlantic, the picture is strikingly similar: Harvard Health puts the average American's intake at 15–16g, against a recommended 25–38g.

The internet has noticed. "Fibermaxxing" — the push to eat more fibre at every meal — has become one of this year's defining wellness trends, spilling out of TikTok and into dietitians' clinics. Much of it is sound advice. Some of it, less so. The trend has also fuelled a wave of fibre gummies, isolated powders and fortified bars, engineered to hit a gram count rather than feed the body the way whole food does.

Harvard's own nutrition team is unambiguous about which approach actually works. Its guidance is to build meals around whole grains, vegetables, pulses and fruit, and it specifically cautions against leaning on "fake fibres" — additives like inulin and isolated cellulose dropped into processed products to pad out a label. The fibre that lowers cardiovascular risk, the research shows, has consistently come from food, not formulation.

Why a spoonful of oil belongs in the conversation

Here is the detail fibermaxxing culture tends to skip: fibre-rich vegetables only release their full nutritional value in the presence of fat. Research from Iowa State University, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that adding oil to a salad significantly increased the body's absorption of carotenoids, vitamin K and vitamin E — nutrients that are otherwise largely wasted. Without any fat at all, the researchers found, those benefits barely registered.

This is the quiet logic behind Mediterranean eating, and it is why Harvard's own sample high-fibre menu finishes its vegetables in an olive oil dressing. The oil is not incidental. It is what makes the fibre work.

Extra virgin olive oil brings its own case to the table, separate from what it helps the body absorb. Polyphenols — the bitter, peppery compounds concentrated in early-harvest, cold-pressed oil — are recognised by EFSA for their role in protecting blood lipids from oxidative stress, one of the few olive oil health claims to pass Europe's rigorous scientific review. Fresh-pressed, polyphenol-rich oil is doing two jobs on the plate at once: carrying the fibre's nutrients into the body, and bringing its own antioxidant and anti-inflammatory contribution.

The daily ritual, not the daily gram count

This is where the fibre conversation and the Oliiv one meet. We have never framed olive oil as a supplement, a hack, or a number to hit. It is a ritual — a spoonful over vegetables at lunch, a finish on lentils and wholegrains at dinner, consistent and unremarkable in the best sense. Done daily, it is also doing quiet, measurable work: helping the body take up what good food already offers.

That only holds if the oil itself is worth the ritual. Oliiv is pressed from a single estate, within hours of harvest, and every bottle carries its harvest date rather than a vague "best before." Freshness is everything in olive oil — polyphenol levels fall from the moment the fruit leaves the tree, which is why so much supermarket oil tastes flat and performs the same way nutritionally. Ours is grown under regenerative farming practices on that same estate, bottled early, and sent out closer to fresh-pressed fruit juice than to a processed cooking ingredient.

Fibermaxxing has the right instinct. The fix for Britain's and America's fibre gap was never going to be a gummy. It is vegetables, pulses and wholegrains, finished properly — with a fresh, polyphenol-rich oil that helps the body use what is already on the plate. Begin there, and the ritual does the rest.

Sources: ZOE, "UK fibre gap survey," June 2026; NHS, "How to get more fibre into your diet"; Harvard Health Publishing, "Fiber: The carb you can count on for heart health"; EFSA Journal, "Scientific Opinion on olive oil polyphenols and health claims," European Food Safety Authority.