The Revenge of Roughage

When Srinidhi Chari, an analyst with a VC firm in Bengaluru, stopped losing weight on a ketogenic diet despite being on a calorie deficit and working out, she reached out to a dietician who showed her that it is fibre that does the heavy lifting: it’s what manages hunger, slows glucose spikes, and nurtures the microbiome. In her diet chart, a lover letter to legumes and native vegetables, protein is tightly portioned, even conditional—on workout days only—paired with a vigilant focus on native grains and vegetables as satiety foods, breaking from the global gym-driven protein obsession. For a 26-year-old woman navigating hormones, a sluggish thyroid and a history of spinal stress, the chart does what the protein-forward prescriptions could not: it supports endocrine rhythm, muscular strength, and digestive tempo through a non-punitive, fibre-led philosophy. Chari has lost 4kg in just a couple of weeks— weight that wouldn’t budge earlier—and feels better than ever.

Fibre was never sexy. It was neither Instagrammable nor performative. It had no PR team. It could not be reduced into a bar, or bottled, or blended with “whey isolate” and sold as a lifestyle. And yet—fibre has returned. Not with a bang, nor with endorsements, nor even with clever packaging. But with data.

In a viral video, Australian dietitian Alice Bleathman issued a blunt, impassioned plea that shook up TikTok and Instagram: “Young people are dying of colon cancer. Please eat more fibre than protein.” Our obsession with high-protein, low-carb diets has come at the cost of our gut health, she said—and that fibre, long overlooked, is essential for preventing colorectal cancer. Her message, stripped of influencer polish, has resonated deeply in a cultural moment where protein is glorified and fibre is barely mentioned.

What is fibre? It is the part of the plant you can’t digest. It resists. It passes through your alimentary canal largely intact. And because we can’t break it down, we assumed for years that it wasn’t doing anything. Until it turned out that not only was fibre doing something, it was doing everything: lowering cholesterol, regulating insulin, feeding beneficial bacteria, preventing colon cancer, promoting satiety, modulating inflammation, improving metabolic markers, reducing all-cause mortality.“For years, we chased protein as if the body were a machine to be built. But fiber is what makes it a system. It’s less about muscle, more about mood, immunity, hormones, even memory. We’re only just beginning to see that digestion is our deepest intelligence,” says Dr Sanjana Rai, a Bengaluru-based clinical nutritionist.

Once upon a time, the world fell out of love with fat. Nutritionists declared war on butter, ghee, and the word “cholesterol” itself. Indian kitchens reluctantly switched to refined oils and “low-fat” dairy, believing this to be modern, hygienic, and cardiologically responsible. Unctuous sachets of “heart-healthy” soybean oil displaced ancestral coconut and mustard. The ghee tin retreated to the back of the pantry like an excommunicated uncle who still insists on smoking. This fat-phobia was, of course, deeply flawed. Decades of follow-up studies revealed that total fat intake had a far less direct correlation with heart disease than initially believed. The Green Revolution’s monoculture carb empire had far worse effects than the traditional Indian fat trinity of coconut, sesame, and ghee. But the damage was done.

Fat was the first macro scapegoat. And when its guilt began to wear thin, carbs stepped in. In the early 2000s, carbs were suddenly everywhere: visible, blameable, and apparently making everyone fat. Atkins. Paleo. Keto. Intermittent fasting. Low-carb roti. Cauliflower rice. Zoodles. Air-fried broccoli florets with pink Himalayan salt and macros calculated down to the third decimal. The pendulum had swung from fear of fat to paranoia about carbohydrates, which were now accused of causing insulin spikes, blood sugar crashes, and moral weakness.

In India, this meant the demonisation of rice—which is to say, the demonisation of home itself. White rice, the stuff of comfort khichdi, sickbed congee and temple pongal, was now implicated in the rise of lifestyle diseases. That rice = diabetes became a meme masquerading as policy. But, as with fat, the problem wasn’t carbs per se. It was refined carbs. White flour. Sugary sodas. The polished rice stripped of bran, then reheated in plastic. The carbohydrate, like the fat, had been flattened into an abstraction.

Now, thanks to large-scale studies in India, Korea, and the Mediterranean, we know that complex carbohydrates—whole grains, legumes, vegetables—don’t just not harm you; they protect you. Carbs are not the enemy. They are the medium in which fibre lives and moves and has its being.

If fat was a fallen god, and carbs a morally suspect cousin, protein became a messiah. Its rise was swift and remarkably effective. The word protein acquired an aura of sanctity—nutritionally correct, muscular, sleek, reformist. Protein bars, protein rotis, protein cookies. Even Indian parents—those former foes of muscle-chasing—began asking dieticians if their teenage daughters were “getting enough protein”. It was the ultimate reversal: paneer went from being “fatty” to being a virtue. But the real question is this: Was any of it necessary? Did we actually lack protein?

Yes, many rural and lower-income populations in India get insufficient complete protein. But for urban, reasonably diverse eaters, what we often have is a perceived deficit driven by aspirational fitness culture—and increasingly, a market profiting from it. Now, evidence is accumulating that over-consumption of protein—particularly via supplements or red meat—is not only unnecessary but potentially harmful to kidney function, the microbiome, and long-term metabolic health. More importantly, in the mad rush for protein, we forgot what gives our food structure—that indigestible, magnificent plant scaffolding known as fibre.

If this were a screenplay, fibre would be the disrespected side character who slowly, in the final act, reveals herself as the actual protagonist. She was there all along—quiet, dependable, unglamorous—surviving on the periphery of food fads. And now she’s stepping into the spotlight. The reason is simple and staggeringly persuasive: fibre is the only dietary element consistently linked with reductions in all-cause mortality, diabetes, colorectal cancer, cardiovascular disease, and inflammatory disorders. And yet, we are not getting enough. A majority of urban Indians fall short of even the minimum recommended daily intake of 25–30g. In fact, the protein obsession has crowded out fiber, just as the anti-fat era once replaced ghee with corn syrup.

The average Indian thali, if traditionally prepared, is a masterclass in nutrition. Whole grain (jowar, bajra, ragi), lentils (fibre + protein), sautéed vegetables (micronutrients + fibre), fermented foods (probiotic), and a bit of fat (usually ghee or oil, for satiety and absorption). There is balance. There is variety. There is fiber—at scale, across class, language, region.

What changed? Industrial food. Supermarket white bread. Packaged snacks. The decline of millets—a whole chapter unto itself. Millets are high in fibre, low in glycemic index, rich in minerals, and native to India. They were dismissed as “coarse” grains and are now, ironically, being rebranded as “superfoods” by the very nutritionists who once ignored them. The United Nations declared 2023 the International Year of Millets, partly at India’s behest. There are now millet startups, millet cafes, and Instagram chefs making millet gnocchi. But even as urban India reclaims what rural India never truly forgot, the point is this: fibre was always here. In arhar dal, in methi leaves, in jackfruit sabzi. It just didn’t have a lobby.

It feeds the microbiome—those trillions of gut bacteria who do everything from modulating immunity to synthesising neurotransmitters. We are not, strictly speaking, just ourselves. You are, in some sense, a walking terrarium of microorganisms. Your gut microbiome contains more genes than your own genome. It affects your mood, your immune system, your digestion, possibly even your long-term risk of dementia. And what does this teeming, symbiotic ecosystem want? Not protein shakes. Not almond flour. Not low-carb ice cream. It wants fibre. It wants diversity. It wants resistant starches from legumes, polyphenols from greens, fermentable carbohydrates from root vegetables. And when it gets them, it rewards you—silently, subcellularly—with things like reduced inflammation, better sleep, lower visceral fat, and fewer auto-immune flares. Which is why modern nutrition—having tried and failed to cure everything with single nutrients—is now returning, sheepishly, to whole foods. Not food products. Not enhanced supplements. But food: what your grandmother cooked before anyone used the term “superfood”.

And now, the science is basically shouting. Take, for example, a 2024 meta-review in Nutrients, which concluded that high-fibre diets are linked—robustly—with lower risks of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, colon cancer, and chronic inflammation. One study in Clinical Nutrition (2023) tracked high-fibre eaters over time and found they had 23% lower all-cause mortality than their low-fibre peers. That is: they didn’t just have better digestion or better blood sugar—they lived longer. For real. A 2023 review in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences emphasised that fibre intake is inversely associated with the risk of colorectal cancer highlighting the significance of dietary choices in cancer prevention. Colon cancer rates are increasing in younger populations, particularly in high-income countries like the US, UK, and urban India. According to a 2023 American Cancer Society report, people under 55 now make up 20% of new colorectal cancer cases in the US—double the rate from the 1990s.

What is perhaps even more mind-twisting is the extent to which this humble indigestible stuff is deeply involved in your immune system, mood, body fat, and likelihood of becoming another hypertension statistic. The Harvard Health Review published a 2023 summary noting that dietary fibre remodels your gut microbiome in a way that reduces inflammation and stabilizes immune function. Meaning: less chronic disease, fewer mystery symptoms, and a quieter war happening in your intestines. And now, as if the gut-immune axis wasn’t enough, Southern Cross University in 2024 revealed that fibre might also improve mental health in pregnant and postpartum women by nourishing the gut-brain axis—the same neural circuitry implicated in anxiety, depression, and whatever it is that happens to you at 3:17 a.m. when your thoughts begin to howl.Then there is the weight loss. Not the Ozempic-pilled, social media–tracked kind that requires apps and supervision, but the kind that comes from satiety. As in: you just stop eating because you feel full. When The Sun, quoting peer-reviewed work, called fibre “nature’s Ozempic” in 2024, the point was chemically sound: soluble fibre slows gastric emptying, balances insulin, and lets your hypothalamus register that food has, in fact, occurred. All of which brings us back to the most elegant paradox in modern nutrition: the part of the plant we can’t digest could be the part that heals us.

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