Potassium Fiber is one drink, built to narrow two gaps that show up in almost every national diet survey: potassium and fiber.
Who makes it
Dr Brad Stanfield
Brad is a general practitioner, the kind of doctor most people call a family doctor. He's registered in New Zealand and in Australia, and he works in general practice in New Zealand.
Where the writing on this site stops
The articles on this site report what specific trials and national surveys measured, with the size of each study and who paid for it, and a source for every figure so you can check it yourself.
None of them says what this drink will do for your health.
Who sells it
Potassium Fiber is sold by Dr Brad Inc, 2810 N Church St, PMB 67699, Wilmington, DE 19802, United States.
Questions this page doesn't answer are usually in the frequently asked questions. If yours isn't there, the contact form reaches a person.
The gap we built it for
None of the figures in this section are ours. They come from the bodies that set nutrition targets and from the national surveys that measure what people actually eat.
How much fiber is recommended, and how much people eat
Nutrition authorities in the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe land in roughly the same place on fiber. The United States sets an Adequate Intake of 14 grams of fiber for every 1,000 calories eaten, which works out at the figures below. The United Kingdom's Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition recommends 30 grams a day. Europe's food safety agency sets 25 grams.
| Fiber a day | 19 to 50 | 51 and over |
|---|---|---|
| Men | 38 g | 30 g |
| Women | 25 g | 21 g |
Adequate Intake for fiber, set by the National Academies.
Measured intakes are nowhere near that. US adults eat about 16 grams a day, pooled from ten years of national survey data in a 2015 analysis. That analysis was funded by Kellogg, a cereal company; two of its authors were paid Kellogg consultants and the third had worked for Kellogg. About 95 percent of Americans fall short of the recommendation, according to a 2017 report from a summit Kellogg funded; one of its two authors is a Kellogg employee and the other was paid by Kellogg to write it.
British adults eat about 16 to 17 grams a day: 16.4 grams at 19 to 64, 16.9 at 65 to 74 and 16.4 at 75 and over, in the National Diet and Nutrition Survey for 2019 to 2023. Only 4 percent of adults reach the 30 gram recommendation.
How much potassium is recommended
The United States Adequate Intake for potassium, set by the National Academies in 2019, is 3,400 mg a day for men aged 19 and over and 2,600 mg for women. Europe's figure is 3,500 mg for all adults. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020 to 2025 name potassium and dietary fiber as two of the four dietary components of public health concern because Americans eat too little of them, alongside calcium and vitamin D.
Food is the better way to close both gaps
Nothing on this page changes that. A cup of cooked lentils carries about 730 mg of potassium and 16 grams of fiber. A baked potato eaten with the skin on carries about 925 mg of potassium. If you're already eating that way every day, you don't need this drink. Most people aren't. The familiar advice (more beans and lentils, more oats, vegetables and fruit with the skin left on) often doesn't survive a working week.
What's in it
One scoop, once a day, mixed into cold water
Acacia gum, also sold as gum arabic, is the dried sap of the acacia tree. Its known uses go back about 5,000 years, and it's a permitted food ingredient in every market we ship to: generally recognized as safe in the United States, and food additive E 414 in the United Kingdom and the European Union.
Potassium citrate is the potassium salt of citric acid, the acid that makes citrus fruit sour. It's the most water-soluble of the common potassium salts, which is why it disappears into a glass instead of settling at the bottom.
Why acacia gum rather than psyllium
What many fiber supplements use, and why it thickens
Many fiber supplements use psyllium husk or a beta-glucan from oats or barley. Those fibers work by forming a gel in water. The gel is the point, and it's also the problem: a fiber that thickens in your gut thickens in the glass. Anyone who has drunk a psyllium mixture knows the texture, and knows they have about 30 seconds to drink it before it sets.
Where acacia gum sits
Acacia gum sits at the other end of the scale. It's one of the least viscous soluble fibers there is, which means it stirs into water with no grit and no thickening. It ferments more slowly than inulin, but gut bacteria ferment nearly all of it in the end.
The trade-off
Several of the best-studied effects of dietary fiber belong to the gel-forming fibers: the cholesterol evidence is for psyllium and oat beta-glucan, not for acacia gum. A drink built on those fibers thickens within a minute of mixing. We chose the fiber that stays thin, and we don't claim the gel-forming fibers' effects for it.
What the safety review found
The European Food Safety Authority re-examined acacia gum in 2017 and concluded there was no need to set a numerical acceptable daily intake, and no safety concern at the levels it's used as a food additive. It noted that adults tolerated up to 30 grams a day, about 430 mg per kilogram of body weight, in studies lasting up to 18 days, though some people had more gas at that level. That's three times the acacia gum in one scoop. The label allows two scoops a day.
Why potassium citrate, and why only 500 mg
Why citrate rather than chloride
Potassium chloride is the cheaper salt, and it tastes like it: bitter and metallic. Potassium citrate is saline and mildly tart, which lemon and lime cover easily.
Why the dose stops at 500 mg
The dose is deliberately modest. 500 mg is about 15 percent of the Adequate Intake for men and 19 percent for women, a top-up rather than a large single dose. Larger single doses of potassium are harder to hide in a drink, and this one is stirred into at least 300 mL of water rather than swallowed as a concentrated tablet.
Most potassium pills stop at 99 mg because of two drug rules, not because of a limit on supplements. The article on why potassium supplements stop at 99 mg goes through both.
Start low, go slow
Half a scoop first, then a full scoop
Starting on half a scoop for the first week or two is the standard advice and may make the first weeks easier. After that, move up to a full scoop, and take two scoops a day at most. Stir each scoop into at least 300 mL (about 10 fl oz) of cold water and drink it promptly.
Some gas or bloating in the first week or two is common while the bacteria in your gut adjust to more fiber arriving. The article on adding fiber without the bloating goes through what the trials found about getting used to more fiber.
What this is not
It is a dietary supplement, not a medicine
We don't claim it treats, cures or prevents anything. If something about your health is worrying you, that's a conversation for your own doctor, who knows your history.
Where the numbers come from
- Quagliani D, Felt-Gunderson P. Closing America's fiber intake gap: communication strategies from a food and fiber summit. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. 2017;11(1):80-85. doi:10.1177/1559827615588079. The summit it reports was funded by Kellogg, a cereal company; one author is a Kellogg employee and the other was paid by Kellogg to write it.
- McGill CR, Fulgoni VL 3rd, Devareddy L. Ten-year trends in fiber and whole grain intakes and food sources for the United States population: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2001-2010. Nutrients. 2015;7(2):1119-1130. doi:10.3390/nu7021119. Funded by Kellogg, a cereal company; two of its authors were paid Kellogg consultants and the third had worked for Kellogg.
- Hoy MK, Goldman JD. Fiber intake of the U.S. population: What We Eat in America, NHANES 2009-2010. Food Surveys Research Group Dietary Data Brief No. 12. US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, September 2014.
- Institute of Medicine. Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy, Carbohydrate, Fiber, Fat, Fatty Acids, Cholesterol, Protein, and Amino Acids. Washington DC: The National Academies Press, 2005. doi:10.17226/10490
- Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition. Carbohydrates and Health. London: The Stationery Office, 2015.
- EFSA Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies. Scientific opinion on dietary reference values for carbohydrates and dietary fibre. EFSA Journal. 2010;8(3):1462. doi:10.2903/j.efsa.2010.1462
- National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Dietary Reference Intakes for Sodium and Potassium. Washington DC: The National Academies Press, 2019. doi:10.17226/25353
- EFSA Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies. Dietary reference values for potassium. EFSA Journal. 2016;14(10):4592. doi:10.2903/j.efsa.2016.4592
- US Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025. 9th edition, December 2020.
- EFSA Panel on Food Additives and Nutrient Sources added to Food. Re-evaluation of acacia gum (E 414) as a food additive. EFSA Journal. 2017;15(4):4741. doi:10.2903/j.efsa.2017.4741
- Food composition figures from the United States Department of Agriculture FoodData Central, SR Legacy.
- Office for Health Improvement and Disparities. National Diet and Nutrition Survey 2019 to 2023: report. Official statistics, published 11 June 2025.
- World Bank. Export marketing of gum arabic from Sudan. Policy note, March 2007.