TRUBAR’s Cha Cha Matcha Bar Has 12 Grams of “Tapioca Fiber.” The Label Doesn’t Say Which Kind, and the Kind Is the Whole Question

The matcha crowd has a protein bar now. TRUBAR, the plant-protein brand founded by Erica Groussman, whose bars the company says are in more than 32,000 stores, and Cha Cha Matcha, which the two describe as “the cult-favorite matcha café” of New York and Los Angeles, have made a limited-edition bar together: Love You So Cha Cha Matcha Latte, white-chocolate coated, $31.99 for a box of twelve. It went on sale September 11, was announced on the 16th, and lands in the cafés on the 19th, “while supplies last.” The trade press summed it up the way the wrapper does: 12 grams of plant protein, 12 grams of fiber, 190 calories.

It is the second 12 that interested us. Twelve grams is a lot of fiber to fit in a 50-gram bar with almonds as its only whole food near the top of the list, and the label says where it comes from: the first ingredient is a “tapioca blend” of tapioca fiber and cassava root flour. “Tapioca fiber” is a name the industry has used for two quite different ingredients, one the FDA counts as fiber and one it has twice declined to. The label does not say which this is. We are not suggesting it is the wrong one; the bar’s own numbers, as we will show, point the reassuring way. But it is the one fact about this bar that decides what those 12 grams do once eaten, and it is one sentence the brand could add.

The panelWhat one bar contains

The Nutrition Facts panel exists only as an image on the brand’s page, so we read it there. Per 50-gram bar: 190 calories; 8 grams of fat, 3.5 saturated; 65 milligrams of sodium; 24 grams of carbohydrate, of which 12 are dietary fiber (43 percent of the Daily Value) and 7 are sugars, 6 of them added; and 12 grams of protein, which the panel rates at 15 percent of the Daily Value rather than the 24 percent the raw grams would give, because that figure is corrected for protein quality and rice and pea proteins score below dairy. The ingredients: tapioca blend (tapioca fiber, cassava root flour), protein blend (brown rice protein, organic pea protein), almonds, organic cane sugar, palm oil, medium chain triglycerides, natural flavors, matcha, sunflower lecithin, sea salt, monk fruit, and turmeric and blue spirulina for colour. No sugar alcohols, as the wrapper says. One oddity: a marketing line on that same image reads “13G FIBER,” while the panel beside it, the wrapper, the box and the press release all say 12.

The matcha is the eighth ingredient, after the natural flavors, and the brand puts the caffeine at 10 milligrams, an eighth to a quarter of what a café matcha carries. Whatever this bar does to your afternoon, it will not be the matcha doing it.

The ingredientTwo things called tapioca fiber

Federal labelling rules define dietary fiber narrowly. Fiber that is intact in a plant counts automatically. Fiber that has been isolated or manufactured counts only if the FDA has decided it has “physiological effects that are beneficial to human health.” Seven such ingredients are written into the regulation, and a 2018 guidance lets manufacturers count eight more while the rule catches up, among them “resistant maltodextrin/dextrin.” The words “tapioca fiber” appear on neither list. That is not a problem in itself: a resistant dextrin made from tapioca starch sits squarely in the permitted category, and at least one competing bar maker says in its FAQ that this is what its tapioca fiber is.

The other ingredient that has travelled under the name is isomaltooligosaccharide syrup. IMOs, a trade publication noted in 2016, “are often referred to as ‘tapioca fiber’ or ‘corn fiber.’” Their manufacturers asked the FDA to recognise them as dietary fiber, and the agency said no in June 2018 and again in January 2020, concluding that “the strength of the evidence does not show that the consumption of IMO has a physiological effect that is beneficial to human health.” The human data explain why. A Japanese study found IMO “readily hydrolyzed by small intestinal enzymes,” and in a 2018 trial run by an IMO manufacturer’s own scientists, 26 adults’ blood sugar rose the same after IMO as after dextrose, leading the authors to conclude that “IMO is digestible and can be used to replace sugars.” An ingredient that digests like sugar is not doing a fiber’s work in the gut, whatever it is called.

Which does TRUBAR use? Its label, product page and FAQ do not say. The arithmetic on its own panel, though, is consistent with the non-digestible kind. Fat at 9 calories a gram gives 72; protein at 4 gives 48; the 12 grams of non-fiber carbohydrate give 48; and the regulation assigns non-digestible soluble fiber 2 calories a gram, which adds 24. That totals 192, which rounds to the 190 on the wrapper. Counted as ordinary carbohydrate, the same bar would come to 216. That is label math, not a lab test, and it tells us how the company classifies the ingredient rather than what a chemist would find. It is still the most useful clue available, and it is a good one.

The doseTwelve grams at once

Assume, then, a resistant dextrin. The research on those is mostly reassuring and mostly paid for by the companies that make them, which the papers disclose. In a Dutch trial of a wheat-derived version, flatulence became more frequent at 30 grams a day and above, none of the doses caused diarrhoea, and the authors judged it “well tolerated up to a dose of 45 g daily.” A Japanese dose-finding study put the largest single dose with no laxative effect at about a gram per kilogram of body weight, which for a 70-kilogram adult is nearly six of these bars. The only human trial we found of a tapioca-derived version gave a 50-gram drink, four bars’ worth, and recorded a low blood-sugar response and some flatulence.

The closest match to the bar is a 2022 Barcelona study that gave 20 healthy adults 14 grams of resistant dextrin a day for four weeks. It found “an initial increase in intestinal gas production and gas-related sensations, followed by a subsequent decrease”: the gut adapts. That is the honest expectation here. Twelve grams sits far below every tolerance ceiling on record, and it is also about 72 percent of the 16.6 grams the average American adult eats in a whole day, arriving in one snack. If your usual intake is low, the first few bars may be noticeable and the tenth probably will not. Skipping sugar alcohols removes one well-known cause of bar bloat; it does not make 12 grams of fermentable fiber invisible.

The claim“GLP-1 Friendly”

The product page adds a line that appears on about twenty TRUBAR products: “GLP-1 Friendly: Full of protein and fiber, perfect for your GLP-1 needs.” That sentence is the whole of the explanation. The phrase has no official meaning; as the Associated Press reported in January, such labels are not regulated by the FDA, and the Agriculture Department says there is “no regulatory standard for the term.” The nearest thing to a standard is last year’s joint advisory from four medical societies on eating while taking these drugs, and it is more careful than the slogan. It encourages “fiber from foods” and minimally processed, nutrient-dense eating; it suggests protein targets that would make 12 grams roughly an eighth of a day’s goal for a 70-kilogram adult; and it notes that foods high in fiber “can further slow gastric emptying” and “worsen constipation, potentially requiring temporary limitation,” particularly in the first days of treatment. We covered that balance in our guide to fiber on a GLP-1. A bar like this can fit. “Perfect” is doing a lot of work.

None of this makes the bar a bad snack. It has a short, legible ingredient list, real almonds, a modest 6 grams of added sugar, and no sugar alcohols, and if its tapioca fiber is the resistant kind, as its own calorie count implies, the 12 grams is a genuine contribution to a day most people finish short. What it lacks is the one line that would settle the question: which tapioca fiber. We would like to see it on the page. TRUBAR and Cha Cha Matcha had no involvement in this article, which is educational, describes what the cited label, regulations and trials say, and is not medical advice.