Fibre is having its moment: the claims rules brands keep getting wrong

Fibre had an image problem

For a long time, fibre was the nutrient nobody wanted to build a brand around. It lived in the digestion conversation. It was worthy, a bit dull, and frankly uncool.

That’s changed.

The global fibre market is forecast to grow more than 7% a year through to 2033. And the force behind that growth is gut health. In one survey, 77% of people who said they wanted to eat more fibre pointed to gut health as the reason.

But gut health isn’t doing all the work. People are reaching for fibre for weight management, heart health and satiety too. It has become a genuine functional ingredient, and consumers would much rather get it from a tasty bar or an everyday product than choke down a supplement.

Where the commercial opportunity actually sits

Bakery is the anchor sector. Bread, cereals and baked goods are where fibre is being added most, which makes sense; it’s where consumers already expect it and where formulation can carry it without wrecking the eating experience.

Prebiotic fibres are leading the charge, making up two-thirds of fibre revenue last year.

So if you make food, fibre is one of the most commercially relevant ingredients you could be working with right now.

Here’s the catch.

This is where brands get caught

The moment you put fibre on the front of pack, you’ve stepped into regulated territory. And the thing most brands don’t realise is that “high in fibre,” “source of fibre”, and “supports gut health” are not the same kind of claim. They sit in different parts of the Food Standards Code, and they trigger different rules.

Get that wrong, and a great product becomes a non-compliant one.

“Source of dietary fibre” and “good source of dietary fibre” are nutrition content claims. They’re governed by Standard 1.2.7, with the conditions set out in Schedule 4. To carry them, your product has to hit a per-serving threshold. A serving needs at least 2 grams of dietary fibre before you can make any positive fibre content claim at all, at least 4 grams for “good source,” and at least 7 grams for “excellent source.” Those tiers are the wording the Code recognises. Casual phrasing like “high in fibre” isn’t a free-for-all; it has to map to a claim the Code actually permits, made on a food that meets the condition for it. The number and the words have to line up.

“Supports gut health” is a different animal entirely. That’s a health claim, because it links a property of the food to a health effect. And health claims come with a heavier set of requirements.

The gut health claim has a trap in it

Here’s the part almost nobody expects. The only fibre health claim the Code pre-approves is “contributes to regular laxation.” That’s the wording sitting in the general level health claims table, and to use it your food just has to meet the ordinary fibre content condition. “Supports gut health” is not in that table. So the moment you reach for that phrasing, you’ve stepped off the pre-approved path and onto the self-substantiation one.

Self-substantiation is not a formality. It means establishing the food-health relationship yourself through a systematic review that meets the process set out in Schedule 6, then notifying FSANZ before you make the claim. It’s a genuine evidence exercise, not a wording tweak, and it’s a long way from writing three words on a bar wrapper.

And whichever route you take, there’s a gate in front of both. Your food has to meet the Nutrient Profiling Scoring Criterion. This is where genuinely high-fibre products come unstuck, because the criterion gates health claims, not nutrition content claims. A fibre-rich bar that’s also loaded with sugar or sodium can quietly fail it, which means it can carry “source of fibre” all day long, but it cannot legally make a gut health claim. Same product. Two different answers. The fibre content was never the problem.

One more thing worth saying plainly, because it trips up nearly everyone: FSANZ does not approve or validate a self-substantiated claim. You certify it, and you notify it. The responsibility and the liability sit with you. Your packaging should never imply a regulator has signed off on your gut health claim, because none has.

The wording is not a detail

Fibre is a real opportunity, and it’s one of the few functional stories with the science and the consumer demand pulling in the same direction. But the difference between a compliant fibre claim and an expensive recall is often a single word, a threshold missed by half a gram, or a claim made on a product that never met the criterion to carry it.

The time to get your fibre claims right is before the packaging goes to print, not after a retailer flags it or the ACCC does.

If you want to sanity-check your labelling in the meantime, our free guide breaks down the six biggest labelling and health claim mistakes we see food brands make, and how to catch them before they become expensive problems. You can download it here.