The Weetabix Food Company pledges to close the fibre 'diet gap'
30 May 2023
The Weetabix Food Company has always been synonymous with a high-fibre diet. Ever since Weetabix Original first appeared on breakfast tables up and down the country 90 years ago, it has been the mainstay for delivering well-balanced, healthy breakfasts. The Weetabix Food Company are passionate about providing their consumers with the ‘Weetabix Advantage’ every morning, giving them the strong start to the day that only a proper breakfast can do. They’re not the nation’s favourite cereal1 for nothing!
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Government guidelines say our dietary fibre intake should increase to 30g a day, as part of a healthy balanced diet. As most adults are only eating an average of about 20g day, we need to find ways of increasing our intake.
Weetabix has 97% household penetration and is present in nearly 10 million UK households2. It is one of the first foods you try as a baby and the one the nation comes back to time and again, so they know they have an important role to play in shifting the needle on the fibre diet gap.
As part of FDF’s Action on Fibre, the Weetabix Food Company have formalised their commitment to creating breakfast products that help the UK increase its fibre intake and generating awareness of the importance of a high fibre diet.
All their branded cereals will remain high in fibre and all future branded cereal innovation will also be high in fibre. In addition to this, they will include high fibre messaging on the front and back of packs wherever possible to help consumers make more informed choices.
As a result of this pledge, they have already successfully reformulated their existing Oatibix cereal recipe to increase the fibre per 100g serving from 7.3g to 8.8g, bolstering the fibre content by over 20%.
Their latest suite of product innovations also deliver against this high-fibre commitment. Weetos Orange Chocolately Hoops offer 7g per serving, Oatibix Nutty Crunch offers 6.9g per serving, and Weetabix Baked With Lyle’s Golden Syrup offers 10g per serving – all without compromising on taste.
These innovations and reformulations combined introduced an additional 16 million servings of fibre into the UK’s diet in 2022 alone. With even more fibre-rich innovations in the pipeline for the year ahead, this number is projected to deliver an additional 15 million servings of fibre by the end of 2023.
[1] Nielsen Value Sales data to 25th March 2023
[2] Kantar WPO, Total Coverage, Feb 2023 52we