Fresh herbs

Parsley, basil, mint, cilantro, dill, chives… chopped fresh.

Why?: These are not fibers: what reaches the colon is their polyphenols and their terpenes. Raw, the leaf also brings the lactic bacteria that live on its surface.
Tip: Chop at the last moment, and generously: a bunch of parsley in a tabbouleh is not the same thing as a pinch on the served dish.
Counting: Fresh and dried are two separate categories because they do not deliver the same thing — not because one is “better”. Fresh, the herb brings its volatile terpenes (thymol, carvacrol, menthol, linalool), 30 to 70% of which are lost in drying, plus the lactic bacteria of the raw leaf. These terpenes are not polyphenols: they select the flora rather than feed it. Dried, the herb loses these volatiles but concentrates its non-volatile polyphenols (rosmarinic acid, flavonoids): gram for gram it then plays the role of a spice, and it is under Spices & dried herbs that it is counted. Two chemical loads, two rotations. In all honesty, this is the most fragile distinction in the app: the other categories separate classes of sugars that different bacteria know how to digest, here we separate two profiles within a single axis. And vitamin C, often invoked to defend fresh herbs, has nothing to do with it — it is absorbed well before the colon.
The app's landmark: A serving of about 5 g, every 2 days.

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