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Focus on Fiber

SPECIAL PROJECT

Balanced's Focus on Fiber Campaign seeks to spread awareness and inspire action to elevate fiber to the forefront of nutrition conversations! Our campaign is divided into two main components:

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Changing fiber’s perception - amplifying its benefits and encouraging its consumption.

Public Awareness

increased support

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Calling on USDA to add fiber to school meal guidelines so children have access to healthier school meals

Advocacy

improved access

More Fiber on More Menus

FIBER FOR ALL!
Raising Public Awareness

As a country, the United States has a fiber problem - approximately 97% of us are fiber-deficient. At Balanced, we are committed to educating about fiber and how important it is to our daily lives!

WHY FIBER?

Heart Health

Soluble fiber helps lower cholesterol levels and maintain healthy blood pressure, protecting against heart disease and stroke.

Drink

Watch here to learn more about fiber!

Our series of educational videos covers everything you need to know about fiber, from its health benefits to practical tips on increasing your fiber intake. Watch here and check out our Instagram @thebalancedorg for additional fiber content!

💡 Spotlight on Fiber 💡

02:41

💡 Spotlight on Fiber 💡

Discover Fiber's Powerful Impact Beyond the Gut!

01:18

Discover Fiber's Powerful Impact Beyond the Gut!

🥼 Doctor's Orders: Eat More Fiber!

02:08

🥼 Doctor's Orders: Eat More Fiber!

Delicious ways to eat 25g of fiber every day

00:47

Delicious ways to eat 25g of fiber every day

🔍 Mythbusting Time: The Fiber Edition! 🔍

01:53

🔍 Mythbusting Time: The Fiber Edition! 🔍

Fiber-Rich Recipe Book
(Coming Soon!)

We have collaborated with influencers, physicians, and experts to bring you a collection of delicious, fiber-rich recipes - all for free! This e-book is designed to help you incorporate more fiber into your diet in an enjoyable and easy way.

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Endorse the Campaign!

Show your support for healthier, fiber-rich school meal standards by endorsing the campaign. Add your voice to the movement to address this critical nutritional deficiency in our nation's children.

FIBER ADVOCACY
School Meal Reform

Almost all U.S. children fail to consume the minimum recommended amount of fiber and our health is suffering as a result. Skyrocketing rates of preventable chronic illnesses like heart disease, type-2 diabetes, and high cholesterol are affecting people younger than ever before.

That's why Balanced launched our Focus on Fiber campaign to spread awareness and inspire action leading to stronger nutrition policies in our schools and communities.

CAMPAIGN GOALS

Highlight the evidence indicating a fiber deficit in school meals
Shed light on current policies and practices that hinder fiber consumption in schools
Provide evidence-based recommendations to improve the fiber content and overall healthfulness of school meals

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

The federal school meals programs have an important role to play in ensuring millions of students have access and opportunity to consume adequate dietary fiber. Nearly all school-aged children are not meeting dietary fiber recommendations. Many children are eating two out of three meals at school each day, with an average of 22.6 million children eating school lunch and 12.4 million children consuming breakfast daily in Fiscal Year 2020. Thus, potential policy interventions could significantly impact the health of children across the U.S.

Two main policy approaches within the context of the USDA School Nutrition Programs stand out to address the apparent gap between recommended and actual fiber intakes. Policy Alternative 1 would impose a minimum daily and weekly dietary fiber requirement, while Policy Alternative 2 would strengthen existing meal pattern requirements for whole grains, fruits, legumes, and vegetables to improve dietary fiber offerings in school meals.

Add Dietary Fiber as a Meal Pattern Dietary Specification

Current Dietary Specifications for the USDA meal programs include calories, saturated fat, sodium, and trans fat. Each of these specifications has a maximum level (saturated fat, sodium, trans fat) or a range (calories) that school food operators must stay within while menu planning throughout the week. The USDA does not currently include dietary fiber as a Dietary Specification. Dietary Specifications could be expanded to include dietary fiber from whole-food sources.

This would provide a defined metric for measuring fiber and paint a more detailed picture for school food operators of whether the amount and type of fiber-rich foods (fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans/legumes) offered is sufficient in school meals.

Table 4: Alternative 1 Comparison of Current Requirement to Suggested Change

As with other meal pattern requirements, a minimum dietary fiber requirement should align with the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. See Figure 5 for an example of how the fiber requirement could be depicted as part of the National School Lunch and School Breakfast meal patterns. We calculated the minimum fiber requirement based on the IOM recommendation of 14 g fiber/1000 kcal and using the upper calorie limits for each age/grade group.

Strengthen Existing Meal Pattern Requirements for Whole Grains, Fruits, Legumes, and Vegetables

Current regulations require that specific quantities of fruits, vegetables and vegetable subgroups, and whole grain-rich foods are offered to students daily and weekly, with majority of schools operating under the Offer Versus Serve model. The components as they currently exist can be improved in three specific ways to enhance fiber availability: (1) At lunch, increase the bean/legume vegetable subgroup requirement from ½ cup to 1 cup per week, (2) At breakfast and lunch, eliminate fruit juice as an allowable food item to count toward the fruit component, and (3) At breakfast and lunch, increase the whole grain requirement from 80% whole grain-rich to 100% whole-grain items.

The current transitional rules increased the whole grain-rich requirement from 50% of grains needing to be whole grain rich to 80% of grains needing to be whole grain-rich; however, ‘whole grain-rich’ is not equivalent to ‘whole grain’. As defined earlier, whole grain-rich means at least 50 percent of the grains are whole grain, the rest being enriched.

Table 5: Alternative Comparison of Current Requirement to Suggested Change

See Figure 6 in our white paper for an example of how the strengthened components can be depicted as part of the National School Lunch and School Breakfast meal patterns.

READ THE WHITE PAPER

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Grains are the number one source of dietary fiber in school meals and account for over half of all fiber on the lunch tray.
Grains in school meals are often ultra-processed and contain more added sugar, saturated fat, and sodium. Pastries alone accounted for 17% of total fiber, or roughly one-third of the fiber attributed to grains!
Making space for fiber-dense foods requires, to some degree, a reduction in the reliance on foods and beverages containing little to no fiber.
Highest impact interventions should be focused on diversifying proteins and increasing naturally occurring plant-based fiber.

Learn More in our White Paper

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