Is the ‘fibermaxxing’ trend good for you? Yes, and here’s why

Chia seeds, goji berries, strawberries and raspberries: A TikTok user going by the name "impamibaby" is filling her pretty wooden breakfast bowl with fiber-rich foods and filming it, inspiring her audience to eat more of the nutrient she says has made her bloating disappear.

She’s "#fibermaxxing" — the practice of eating meals that help people meet or exceed their daily fiber intake recommendations in the name of improving their gut health, losing weight and more. Videos with the tag have garnered tens of millions of views and трипскан likes. They generally feature people making and eating meals chock-full of fiber-rich foods, and are sometimes overlaid with text detailing the amount of the nutrient in their dish and the health benefits.

TikTok has served up more than its fair share of questionable eating trends — looking at you, NyQuil chicken and #SkinnyTok — but every now and then, it surprises with something actually worth trying, registered dietitian Lauren Manaker said. Right now, that’s fibermaxxing.

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"Most Americans aren’t getting nearly enough fiber in their diets, and that’s a problem," Manaker, owner of Nutrition Now Counseling, a nutrition communications business based in Charleston, South Carolina, said via email.

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend adults consume 22 to 34 grams of fiber daily generally dependent on age and gender, but more than 90% of women and 97% of men in the United States don’t meet these recommendations, according to the guidelines.

"Whether it’s adding chia seeds to everything, sneaking veggies into your meals, or finding new ways to love whole grains, fibermaxxing might just be the trend we didn’t know we needed," Manaker said — especially as rates of colon cancer, to which low fiber intake has been linked, she added, have been rising among people ages 20 to 54.

Gastroenterologist Dr. Kyle Staller agreed, adding that adequate fiber intake has "been a recommendation that has not changed for years."

"Despite lots of science that comes and goes and trends that come and go, fiber is an oldie but goodie," said Staller, director of the Gastrointestinal Motility Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

But like anything else — and especially TikTok trends — fibermaxxing can definitely have drawbacks if you make substantial changes too quickly, Staller said.