Bloom Pop’s New Crisp Apple Soda Is Prebiotic, but Its Label Lists No Fiber. Here’s Why

A can of Bloom Pop Crisp Apple looks like an October afternoon: orange fading into pale yellow and pink, maple leaves drifting down the sides, a cartoon red apple with a sparkle on its skin and, near the bottom in green type, “LIMITED EDITION prebiotic soda.” Bloom, the Austin wellness brand behind Bloom Sparkling Energy, put its Crisp Apple flavor into its caffeine-free soda line in mid-September. We read the can. Its Nutrition Facts panel has lines for calories, fat, sodium, carbohydrate, sugars, protein and potassium. It has no line for dietary fiber, and the small print under it lists dietary fiber among the things the soda is “not a significant source of.”

For a drink sold on gut health, that looks like a contradiction. It follows from federal rules. The prebiotic in Bloom Pop is xylooligosaccharides, or XOS, which Bloom’s product page names as PreticX, and the FDA has not added XOS to the list of fibers a food label may count as dietary fiber. So the panel cannot count it, whatever it does in your colon. The label also never says how much XOS is in the can. The ingredient list narrows it down: by our arithmetic, roughly 2 grams or less, the low end of what the human XOS trials used. Here is the can, the rules and the research.

The label: What one can holds

The Nutrition Facts image on Target’s Crisp Apple listing gives one 12-ounce can 20 calories, no fat, no sodium, 5 grams of carbohydrate (2 percent of the Daily Value), 3 grams of total sugars including 2 grams of added sugars (4 percent), no protein and 115 milligrams of potassium. The can contains 2 percent juice. The ingredients, in order: carbonated water, organic cane sugar, apple juice concentrate, citric acid, prebiotic xylooligosaccharides, natural flavors, potassium citrate, stevia leaf extract (Rebaudioside M) and organic apple cider vinegar. Target’s listing calls it caffeine-free, and Bloom’s line has kept to the profile it announced in March 2025, when Beverage Industry reported 20 calories, 4 grams of sugar or less and “a trademarked prebiotic.”

The fiber question: A prebiotic the panel cannot count

Federal rules decide what goes on the fiber line. Under 21 CFR 101.9, dietary fiber means carbohydrates that are “intrinsic and intact in plants,” plus isolated or synthetic ones “determined by FDA to have physiological effects that are beneficial to human health.” Seven isolated fibers are written into the regulation, and the FDA’s dietary fiber Q&A, last updated in July 2024, names eleven more it intends to add, from inulin to acacia gum. Xylooligosaccharides appear on neither list. When a serving has less than a gram of countable fiber, the fiber line may be left off, and the rule then calls for a “Not a significant source of dietary fiber” statement, which this can folds into its footnote.

The XOS does not vanish from the panel. Total carbohydrate “shall be calculated by subtraction” of protein, fat, moisture and ash from the food’s total weight, so a carbohydrate that does not qualify as fiber still lands in that 5-gram figure. “Prebiotic” is a different word, with no line on the panel at all. The definition most researchers use, from a 2017 consensus panel of the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics, is “a substrate that is selectively utilized by host microorganisms conferring a health benefit.” So “prebiotic” on the front and “not a significant source of dietary fiber” on the back are not in conflict: one is a scientific category, the other a regulatory one.

The dose: How much XOS is in a can

Bloom does not print the amount on the can, on its product page or in its FAQ. The ingredient list narrows it down. Federal rules require ingredients to appear “in descending order of predominance by weight,” and in Crisp Apple the XOS comes fifth, after the organic cane sugar, the apple juice concentrate and the citric acid. The panel puts added sugars at 2 grams, and because sugar figures are rounded to the nearest gram, the cane sugar weighs no more than about 2.5. The XOS weighs less than that, and less than the citric acid too. The carbohydrate line points the same way: 5 grams of total carbohydrate minus 3 grams of sugars leaves about 2 grams for everything else, and that remainder has to hold the citric acid listed ahead of the XOS as well as the XOS itself. By our arithmetic, a can holds roughly 2 grams of XOS or less, and quite possibly less.

The research: What XOS did in people

The trials of XOS are small, and they used small doses. In a 2014 placebo-controlled study from the VA Medical Center West Los Angeles and UCLA, 32 healthy adults took 1.4 or 2.8 grams of XOS a day for eight weeks. Bifidobacteria rose in both XOS groups, more at 2.8 grams, with no significant change in lactobacilli, stool pH or short-chain fatty acids, and the XOS “was tolerated without significant gastrointestinal side effects.” Its abstract names no funder. A 2015 UCLA pilot, paid for from the university’s departmental funds, gave 2 grams a day for eight weeks to 16 healthy and 13 prediabetic adults. Several gut bacteria shifted, but in the prediabetic group XOS had no effect on blood glucose, insulin resistance or body composition.

Higher doses have been studied for comfort, too. A 2014 University of Reading trial, with three co-authors from DuPont’s nutrition division, gave healthy adults 8 grams a day for three weeks. Bowel movements per day rose, bifidobacteria increased, and bloating, abdominal pain and flatulence were no different from the maltodextrin placebo. In a 2023 trial in China of people with functional constipation, funded by government science grants, people given 3, 5 or 10 grams a day for a month improved “without side effects such as diarrhea and flatulence,” the authors reported. None of these studies tested a soda.

Set the can beside those numbers and the open question is the dose. If a can holds close to 2 grams, one a day sits inside the range the trials used; if it holds well under, it falls below the smallest dose in the 2014 trial, 1.4 grams. Bloom’s page calls its prebiotic “clinically studied.” XOS has been studied, at the doses above, and the can does not say which side of 1.4 grams it is on.

The shelf: Price, stores and the other cans

As of October 3, Walmart.com listed a single can at $2.28, shown in stock, with a 4.8-star average from 13 reviews. Target.com listed it under a “New At Target” tag, with a 4.8 average from 10 ratings. Bloom’s own site showed the same $2.28, an “Out of Stock” button and a banner reading “So good it sold out!” The brand announced the flavor on Instagram, and Sporked dated the release to September 16. The can says limited edition, and Bloom has not said publicly how long it will be sold.

Label to label, the two best-known prebiotic sodas put a number on the fiber line. Poppi’s Raspberry Rose lists 3 grams a can, from cassava root fiber and agave inulin, as we covered in our Poppi piece, and Olipop’s listings say 9 grams for its refrigerated line and 6 for its shelf-stable line. Bloom Pop lists none, so the grams cannot be compared one for one: the difference is the ingredient as much as the amount. How these drinks work in general is in our prebiotic soda explainer.

One more apple to keep straight. Bloom also sells Crisp Apple Sparkling Energy, which Target lists at 10 calories with no sugar, sucralose, XOS of its own and 180 milligrams of caffeine. The Pop has none. We looked at how drinks like that one sit with your stomach in our energy drink piece.

The short version: a 20-calorie soda with 3 grams of sugar, a prebiotic the FDA does not count as fiber, and a dose the label leaves out, which the ingredient order caps at roughly 2 grams, the low end of the small trials in which XOS was well tolerated. Bloom had no involvement in this article. It is educational, describes what the cited labels, regulations and studies say, and is not medical advice.