When starting a ketogenic diet, we have to train ourselves to study the ingredients of the foods we eat, because food labels alone can be misleading, as the FDA doesn’t have the strictest guidelines on the true accuracy of these food labels. That’s why when you run into an ingredient that you’ve never heard of or that sounds weird, it’s time to be detective and do some research into it.
When searching for keto-friendly products, we often find an ingredient called soluble or prebiotic tapioca fiber in the ingredients list. At first glance this may seem like a natural ingredient and not worth fretting about, but when digging deeper, it can be surprising what you may find.
For example, there seems to be a link between soluble tapioca fiber and isomaltooligosaccharides (IMO) on food labels. More directly speaking, many companies are including IMO’s in their products and calling it soluble tapioca fiber, most likely because both soluble tapioca fiber and IMO’s are created from corn and tapioca starch. This is problematic, because real tapioca fiber is not the same as IMO, which means it is incredible confusing and difficult to differentiate between the two on a food label. (For the sake of consistency and avoiding confusion, we will refer to IMO’s as soluble tapioca fiber for the rest of the article.)
The name soluble tapioca fiber is also misleading, because IMO’s are not actually dietary fiber and actually effect your blood glucose levels. There have been studies that show IMO’s can spike blood glucose levels to the same extent as glucose and dextrose. Similarly, products containing IMO’s can spike blood glucose the same way regular sugar does.
So why do companies use (IMO) tapioca fiber in their products? Soluble tapioca fiber acts as a mild sweetener and thickener, improving the consistency of food products. It is also half the cost as soluble corn fiber. Many companies are also advertising their products as no-sugar-added and then adding soluble tapioca fiber instead, which has the same effect as sugar. So we can see how some companies are using this ingredient as a substitute for sugar, even though it has the same effects as sugar. In fact, a few years back, Quest Nutrition replaced IMO’s in their products with soluble corn fiber, which can be a slightly better alternative. (We’ll talk about soluble corn fiber in another article.)
Should we avoid soluble or prebiotic tapioca fiber on a keto diet? In large amounts, yes you should avoid it. In negligible amounts, this ingredient can be treated as regular sugar, which won’t impact you too negatively if you don’t exceed your carb limit. When compared to soluble corn fiber, soluble tapioca fiber will spike your blood glucose more significantly, and it does not act as a dietary fiber. So be cautious when you see this ingredient listed on the products that you buy, and do your own research. You can also test the effects that these ingredients have on your body by measuring your own blood glucose levels, and then you can analyze the results and come to a conclusion of whether to consume the products in the future or not.