A huge 95 percent of us aren’t consuming enough fibre and it’s a real problem.
Photo: Su Müstecaplioglu. Vogue Arabia, September 2021
When the health programme, Zoe, burst onto the scene in 2018, its message was clear: eating for good health is all about what you add onto your plate in order to boost gut diversity, rather than what you remove from your diet. While – obviously – eating ultra-processed foods and mainlining sugar is never going to benefit your health, the experts at Zoe brought the “30 plants a week” rule to the masses, offering recipes and health hacks that centre around a variety of delicious foods, from whole grains to lean meats to all manner of herbs, that bestow their many health benefits on our bodies and minds.
The quest continues with the launch of a new food supplement, the Daily 30+, a blend of over 30 different plants (including mushrooms, spices like turmeric, seeds such as chia and flaxseed, nuts, and wholegrains) that has been designed to be scooped into – or onto – your meals. “The idea was to create something that people could easily add to their food that would help them to eat well,” Dr Federica Amati, head nutritionist at the brand, tells me. “Lots of people say they don’t know how to cook lentils or barley, or to make them taste nice, so we wanted to explore how we could help fix that and facilitate the discovery of these foods.”
They’ve done a good job. Arriving in a signature yellow tin, the savory blend is tasty and can be sprinkled onto all sorts of dishes, including avocado toast, scrambled eggs and pasta (and anything featuring Bold Bean Co, says Dr Amati) to add crunch, flavor, and most importantly, lots of fibre. “It’s all the foods that many of us don’t get enough of in our diet, and it’s incredibly high in fibre, thanks to chicory, inulin, and grapeseed,” says Dr Amati. “I have always recommended adding mixed seeds to your plate, but this has so much more fibre. You get five grams per scoop, whereas a scoop of mixed seeds will offer around two grams.”
Why fibre is key for good health
A huge 95 percent of us aren’t consuming enough fibre and it’s a real problem. “It plays a crucial role in how the body functions,” says Dr Amati. “It helps ensure we go to the toilet regularly, which is how the body expels toxins – the longer a stool sits in your gut, the longer you’re storing things that your body is actually trying to get rid of. But it also feeds the gut microbiome – and one of the single most important things to understand is the relationship between the gut microbiome and your immune system.”
When the gut microbiome isn’t fed enough fibre, it doesn’t produce sufficient short chain fatty acids to communicate with the immune system, which in turn leads to an increase in systemic inflammation, and that underpins the majority of chronic diseases and can lead to poor mental health. “The scientific research shows that an extra five grams of fibre each day leads to a clinically significant reduction in inflammation,” she says. “Another paper found that it reduced the risk of total mortality from all causes – that includes cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancers and diabetes – by 14 percent.”
The Vogue verdict
In our busy worlds, where we’re offered ultra-processed convenience foods at cheap prices, it’s not always easy to eat a balanced diet. But – whether you can afford the testing side of the programme or not – what Zoe continues to do well on its app and social platforms is offering ways in which to eat well that aren’t difficult or incredibly expensive to achieve. The Daily 30+ is a great example of this. Making it easy to add a decent amount of fibre to your daily diet via a simple scoop, it also serves as a reminder that seeds, herbs, nuts, mushrooms, and lentils are all excellent for our health – so let’s add more of them in.
Instead of creating a supplement in capsule form, this blend drives the point home that everything our bodies need can be gleaned through our diets. So, add more fibre-rich foods in – including lentils, beans, artichokes, wholegrains, and raspberries – as a priority. And then sprinkle a scoop of Daily 30+ (which is delicious, I might add), and you’re off to a great start.
Originally published on Vogue.co.uk
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