Cholesterol

Efforts to bridge the fibre gap are being made by food companies, which are developing appealing products with enriched fibre, and governments.

Some countries, such as France and the UK, have advertising and public health campaigns urging consumers to eat at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

The underlying message to these campaigns, according to Guillermou, is fibre content - fibre being the umbrella term for plant substances that are not digested, or only partly digested, by consumers.

"We think that will push demand.

Consumers will become more and more attentive to fibre."This means that they will be more likely to notice higher fibre content on food product labels.

Moreover, consumers in the organic food camp tend to pay more attention to nutrition, he added, so the organic pea fibre, which is imported from Canada, is ideally positioned to appeal to their priorities.

According to the most recent figures from consultancy Frost & Sullican, in Europe and Japan, soluble fibre had the greater market share than insoluble in 2004.

In the US, where the entire fibre market was worth $192.8m (€151.0m) in 2004, insoluble fibre dominated the market with $176.2m (€138.0m), and $16.6m (€13.0m) soluble.

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