One scoop in a glass of water. About 8 g of the fibre most days miss.
Fibre feeds the 38 trillion microbes that power your digestion, immunity and more. The daily target is at least 30 g, about a kilo of plants.
If a kilo of plants a day is what you eat, Buta-8 is not for you.
Online survey of 2,000+ adults aged 25-50 in Delhi NCR, Mumbai and Bengaluru. Indian Dietetic Association (Mumbai) with Country Delight, 2024.
Daily fibre target: ICMR-NIN, 30 g per 2,000 kcal.
Whole food is the better option. It is only better if you do it again tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.
One scoop of Buta-8 is about 8 g of that gap, for 21 calories.
An estimate, not a food diary. Nobody recalls yesterday’s portions to the gram, so these are standard servings and the totals are directional. Fibre and energy values: USDA FoodData Central. Daily target: ICMR-NIN, 30 g per 2,000 kcal.
Eight grams of fibre. Twenty-one calories. One glass of water.
If you top up with a supplement instead, here is what you don’t know about it.
Drag to see what it costs, over time.
These are what a low-fibre diet is associated with, not claims about Buta-8. Associations from populations, and where the work is in animals we say so. We make the fibre. Your colon does the rest.
Tap a fibre. Each does a different job
Simple fructose chains that ferment fast and early, giving a strong, rapid prebiotic for Bifidobacteria. Because it ferments quickly it can produce gas, so it’s best built up gradually.
Resists digestion and reaches the colon intact, where it’s among the more butyrate-favouring fibres, feeding the bacteria that produce butyrate, the short-chain fatty acid that fuels the cells lining your colon. It ferments gradually, so it tends to be gentle on gas.
Soluble but complex and highly branched, so bacteria break it down slowly, giving a more gradual fermentation profile rather than a burst. One of the best-tolerated fibres for sensitive stomachs.
Swells into a thick gel that works both ways: it softens hard stool and firms up loose. It’s primarily gel-forming and less rapidly fermented than the others, so it supports regularity without a sudden gas spike. Its viscosity is the most-studied of these fibres in human trials.
Unusually for a fruit, baobab pulp is mostly soluble fibre, around 77-80% of it across the studies that have measured the split, rather than the even mix most fruit gives you. In the powders that have been characterised, that soluble fraction is largely pectic polysaccharide, the biggest short-chain-fatty-acid yield of any fibre it has been tested against, and less hydrogen than inulin with it. The rest is mixed cell-wall fibre. Plus polyphenols, vitamin C, potassium and magnesium that isolated fibre powders lack.
The whole fruit, freeze-dried, and that matters twice. Jamun’s anthocyanins sit almost entirely in the skin, so a whole-fruit powder keeps them where a pulp powder would throw most of them away; and freeze-drying holds on to those pigments and the fruit’s vitamin C far better than heat drying does. What it brings to the blend is pectin, which gels, plus mixed cell-wall fibre from the skin. (Metabolic effects are largely preclinical: mechanism, not a product claim.)
Your first order is the refill pouch, steel scoop-clip and glass shaker. The steel canister pictured isn’t part of the kit. We send it later, as a thank-you for staying with us.
How the pilot works
One hundred places, open now.
Apply for early access
We write back with the details
You take it daily for three months
Six questions worth asking of any daily fibre. Ours included.
| The question | Buta-8 | A typical fibre powder |
|---|---|---|
| How many fibre types? | Six: psyllium, acacia, inulin, resistant starch, baobab, jamun | Usually one: psyllium or inulin |
| How far along the colon? | Designed across the whole length, 8-hour to 48-hour fermenters | Fast fermenters are spent in the first stretch |
| Anything besides fibre? | Polyphenols, vitamin C, potassium, magnesium from two whole fruits | Isolated fibre, no polyphenols, no micronutrients |
| A gel-forming fibre for regularity? | 3.5 g psyllium, the largest single ingredient | Most prebiotic powders don’t gel |
| Can you see every gram? | Every ingredient, printed on the pack | Proprietary blends are common |
| Built to ease in? | Half-scoop first week, by design | Full dose from day one |
Comparison is with the fibre-supplement category in general, not with any named product.
Built for anyone short on fibre, sharpened for two.
On a GLP-1 you’re eating less, so your gut gets less of the fibre it runs on, right when it needs it most. Buta-8 keeps diverse daily fibre going and supports regularity. We won’t pretend to be Ozempic; we’re the fibre your gut needs while it works.
Diverse fibre feeds the microbes that make butyrate, the fuel your gut lining runs on and a molecule healthspan research keeps circling back to.
It can, if you start too fast. That’s true of any fibre, and it’s the whole reason we build it up slowly. Start at half a scoop in week one, keep the water up, and most first-week gas or fullness settles as your gut bacteria adjust. The blend is also designed to be gentler than a single fermentable fibre: viscous psyllium is kept at or above the inulin, and psyllium taken with inulin produces less gas than inulin alone (Gunn et al., Gut 2022).
Half a scoop a day for week one, then work up to a full scoop if that sat well. Always take it in a full glass of water. Fibre needs water to do its job.
Psyllium is excellent. It’s the backbone of Buta-8. But it’s good at one job, mainly bulk and regularity; it doesn’t do much to feed the bacteria deeper in your gut. Buta-8 keeps the psyllium and adds the fibres that cover the jobs it can’t. See the spectrum →
The individual ingredients have published human evidence; the finished Buta-8 blend has not completed its own trial yet. The founding pilot is where we gather real-world learning on tolerability, regularity and adherence. That is product learning, not a clinical efficacy claim.
Yes, and fibre matters more on a GLP-1, not less. Eating less means your gut gets less of the fibre it runs on. Buta-8 keeps diverse daily fibre going and supports regularity, and there’s real biology behind it: your gut bacteria turn fibre into the signals that trigger your body’s own GLP-1, the same pathway your medicine works on. It’s food, not a drug, so it won’t replace anything your medicine does. Start at half a scoop with plenty of water and build up.
No. It includes chicory inulin, which is a FODMAP. If you’re in a low-FODMAP elimination phase or your clinician has put you on that plan, talk to them first.
Most Indian plates are strong on one kind of fibre and light on the rest: plenty of the bulking kind, much less of the fermentable kind your gut bacteria prefer. Buta-8 isn’t here to replace your food; it fills the part of the fibre gap a good thali usually leaves behind, in one scoop you don’t have to think about.
Don’t take it if you have difficulty swallowing, since psyllium swells in water. If you have a gut condition or take regular medication, check with your doctor before starting.
The pitch is one scoop a day. Underneath it there’s a lot more, and none of it is hidden.
The fibre-class table, what decides a fibre’s job, the butyrate relay, an interactive map of how Buta-8 ferments across your colon, plus a plain list of what we do and don’t claim.
Read the science → The ritualWhen to take it, the two habits that make it work, the week-by-week ramp from half a scoop, and the questions worth asking of any daily fibre, ours included.
See the ritual →I got into fibre when I realised how much it does beyond keeping you regular, right down to how gut bacteria turn it into the fuel our colon cells run on. The deeper I went, the clearer one thing got: dose gets you started, but design is what makes a blend work. Your gut doesn’t want a lot of one fibre. It wants a range, paced to be gentle.
So I built the blend I’d actually keep taking: diverse, easy on the day, and honest about every gram.
Ravi, founder, Akunka
Daily fibre for lifelong colon health. ~8 g, every gram shown, one scoop a day.
Closed founding pilot · Bengaluru · cancel anytime.
Founding pilot open. Bengaluru · 100 members.