The Pothole In Your Diet

One Sunday, I specifically remember pushing him about what we should cover in nutrition. Where were the gaps? What was getting missed?

He didn’t pause.

“It’s all bogus,” he said.

I knew what he meant. Not that good information didn’t exist — it did. Not that people weren’t trying — some were. 

But the same cycle kept repeating: whatever was trending got the attention, whatever was fundamental got ignored. New study, new headline, new thing to optimize. 

Meanwhile, the problems that actually mattered, the gaps that actually moved health outcomes, sat there like a pothole nobody wanted to bother with.

“We can’t just cover what gets clicks,” he said. “We have to cover what matters. Even if nobody is talking about it.”

I wrote it on a piece of paper, where it still sits above my desk. 

That conversation set the direction for more than three years and over 1,000 newsletters. And in all of it — across every topic we’ve covered, every piece of research we’ve dug into — one thing has come up again and again, consistent, never fashionable, never trending, always important.

Fiber. It’s both the pothole in your diet and the real hero hiding inside almost everything we already know is good for us. 

The reason a bowl of oatmeal does what it does. The reason lentils — one of the most nutrient-dense foods on earth — might be the most super of all the so-called superfoods. The reason fruits and vegetables keep showing up in the research on longevity, cancer prevention, heart health, and metabolic function. We tend to credit the food. The fiber is the one doing the work.

And yet 95% of Americans don’t get enough of it.

When most people hear the word fiber, a few images come to mind. An older relative with prune juice on the counter. A chalky powder dissolved in a glass of water. Bathroom humor. It has somehow become the least glamorous nutrient in a field that finds ways to make everything else glamorous.

But a fiber gap isn’t a punchline. It’s a legitimate health risk, compounding over the years, sitting there like a pothole everyone has learned to drive around. And that’s exactly the kind of problem Arnold doesn’t leave alone.

Here’s what most people know but don’t act on: 95% of Americans don’t get close to enough fiber. The recommended range is 25 to 38 grams per day. Unfortunately, the average person gets only about 15 grams per day. 

This isn’t a niche problem. It’s a near-universal gap. And the consequences aren’t subtle. 

The evidence on fiber has been building for more than two decades and the findings keep pointing in the same direction. 

The benefits of fiber read like a magic pill. Higher fiber intake is associated with:

•  ~9% lower cardiovascular disease risk per 7 grams of daily increase.

•  A 15-20% lower risk of Type 2 diabetes. 

• The World Cancer Research Fund rates the protective relationship between fiber and colorectal cancer as “convincing.” 

• Research tracking fiber consumption over decades shows 15–30% lower all-cause mortality in the highest consumers compared to the lowest.

The harder question isn’t whether fiber matters. It’s why most people aren’t getting enough of it.

Part of the answer is execution. Meeting daily fiber targets through whole foods alone requires dietary precision that real life tends to erode. Stress, travel, busy weeks, imperfect days. The gap between knowing and doing is where most health intentions go quiet. And for fiber, that gap is enormous.

Single-source fiber supplements — like psyllium-based products — have been the standard answer for decades. They help with regularity. But the gut ecosystem is more complex than that, and one ingredient can only address one dimension of a multi-dimensional problem.

Different fiber types work in different parts of the digestive system. They feed different bacteria. They work on different timelines. A product designed around only one of them leaves most of the benefit untouched.

When we set out to build Fiber+ with Momentous, the goal wasn’t incremental improvement. It was to build what should have existed all along.

Fiber+ uses three fiber sources, each one earning its place:

Psyllium husk provides the immediate feedback — regularity, satiety, cholesterol support — within the first week. It’s the fiber you feel first.

Resistant potato starch via Solnul™ is the differentiator. Resistant starch reaches the colon intact and feeds the specific bacteria most responsible for producing butyrate, the compound that nourishes your gut lining and underlies most of the downstream benefits we associate with a healthy gut. No major fiber competitor has this ingredient. It’s the 80/20 of gut health the rest of the category has been missing.

Rice bran hull works on the longer timeline, supporting the gut barrier, bioactive plant compounds, and lipid metabolism. It’s the long-game protection most supplements never get to.

The full picture builds over weeks and months. That’s how you build a supplement that lasts the test of time and outlast the trends. Because that’s how biology actually works. Real results compound.

Think about what’s dominated the health conversation over the last decade. Intermittent fasting. Cold plunging. Breathwork. Infrared saunas. Each one has built a devoted following, entire industries, and personality cults. And some of them have real merit. That’s not a knock on them, but it’s a testament to what gets attention and what gets ignored. 

Because the research behind fiber isn’t in the same category as any of them. It’s not even close.

The fiber literature is one of the most robust bodies of evidence in all of nutritional science. Not promising early signals. Not a handful of studies with small sample sizes. Decades of findings across multiple continents, in populations that eat, live, and age differently, and yet keep arriving at the same conclusions. Cardiovascular protection. Blood sugar regulation. Meaningful reductions in colorectal cancer risk. Lower all-cause mortality. 

These aren’t niche benefits tucked into fine print. They’re the kind of findings that, in any other context, would be headline news.

And yet somehow, fiber became the thing your doctor mentions almost apologetically. Eat more vegetables. Maybe try psyllium. Next.

People will restructure their entire morning around a cold plunge, with a fraction of the evidence to support it. 

But fiber — one of the most studied, most consistently supported nutrients in the history of the field — gets a shrug.

Again, that’s not a knock on cold plunging. It’s a question worth sitting with: why does something so well-supported get so consistently ignored?

Part of it is the category. Fiber supplements haven’t evolved much in decades. Take it, stay regular, move on. That’s not a conversation that builds excitement. It’s not an identity. Nobody is putting their fiber routine on social media.

But the real story of fiber is so much bigger than regularity. The gut ecosystem is where a staggering amount of human health is decided. 

Your gut bacteria don’t just process food — they influence inflammation, immune function, how your body responds to the protein and nutrients you’re so carefully consuming. And the primary fuel for that entire system is fiber. Different fibers. Different types, reaching different parts of the digestive tract, feeding different bacteria, producing different outcomes over different timelines.

That’s why a single-source supplement was always leaving something on the table. It’s also why we partnered with Momentous to build Fiber+ the way we did — not as a product that improves on what already existed, but as one that finally takes the science seriously.

The honest goal isn’t to replace fiber-rich food. It’s to give people a reliable foundation that works alongside it. Most people are running a significant daily deficit that dietary changes alone rarely close. A supplement that fills that gap, consistently, daily — one that feeds the whole ecosystem rather than one corner of it — gives the rest of your diet something real to build on.

Arnold has been saying something like this for years. The boring fundamentals done well, done daily, compound into something extraordinary. He's right. He usually is. The fundamentals don't trend. They compound.

Fiber is the most compelling research nobody talks about. For years, the category didn't reflect that reality. We built Fiber+ to reflect what the evidence has been saying all along.

Fiber has been one of the potholes — visible, avoidable, and consistently overlooked. Most people will keep driving around it. The ones who stop and fill it in tend to outlast and outperform the rest. -AB