Fibre intake for optimal health: how can healthcare professionals support people to reach dietary recommendations?

Historically, fibre was defined simply as plant ???roughage,??? and health professionals might still be under the impression that fibre is a single entity. But, like most other nutrients, fibre is much more complex than it first seems, and most people today fall short of meeting dietary recommendations for this nutrient. Modern day diets are very different from those of our ancestors, which contained substantially more fibre because they consumed a variety of plant based foods.1 Ancestral humans might have consumed as much as 100 g of fibre daily.1 Today, adults in North America consume an average of 17 g of dietary fibre daily; intakes are slightly higher in European countries (18 g to 24 g a day).2 The definition of dietary fibre has evolved from ???remnants of plant cells that are resistant to digestion by human enzymes???3 in the 1970s to the more complex global definition outlined in 2009 by the Codex Alimentarius Commission (box 1).4 Although there has been considerable debate over the past few decades about the terminology and analytical methodology used to define dietary fibre, most definitions now include carbohydrates with three or more monomeric units.2 This includes some well known prebiotic fibres, such as fructans and inulins.2 Despite scientific advances in the field, consumer confusion persists, and current intakes of dietary fibre fall short in many populations worldwide.