“WAIT, do I need more fibre?” Exploring UK consumers dietary fibre-related awareness and white bread as a viable solution to promote subsequent intake

Sufficient dietary fibre is associated with well-1 established health benefits, yet such intake is currently suboptimal globally. Thus, there is interest in developing strategies to improve dietary fibre intake. One such approach is to increase the dietary fibre content of staple foods; however, this needs relevant investigation. Forty-two UK-based consumers (18-76 years) were recruited to take part in seven focus group sessions investigating: (i) key factors in food choice; (ii) dietary fibre-related knowledge, awareness, consumption habits and engagement levels; (iii) willingness to consume dietary fibre-rich staple foods; and (iv) gain initial feedback on dietary fibre-rich breads. Overall, key dietary fibre themes emerged such as knowledge (benefits, foods, recommendations, labelling), consumption (not measuring intake), barriers (convenience, knowledge), resources (education, public appeal) and topics (food examples, cooking). Consumers were positive per se to the idea of dietary fibre-rich staple foods but with various caveats (no changes in appearance, taste and cost). White bread trends were centred around context (sandwich, toast), habit (comfort food), preferences (soft, fresh) and consumption is variable (daily to less often). In addition, consumers’ preferred labelling strategy for dietary fibre-rich breads were predominately focused on transparency and visibility. Overall, the newly-developed breads were well received demonstrating the potential of our prototypes to fit into the white bread market; however, additional consumer insights are needed. Our findings recommend combining education with a personalised element of advice, coupled with a collective effort from the government and food industry, is essential to help encourage a step-change in dietary fibre consumption in the UK population.