A Registered Nutritionist's Overnight Berry Chia Pudding: A High-Fibre Breakfast

If your mornings are a blur of alarms and half-drunk coffee, breakfast is usually the first thing to slip. A slice of toast on the way out the door. Maybe nothing at all until mid-morning, when hunger hits hard.

This recipe is designed for exactly those mornings. It comes from Christine Bailey MSc RNutr, AFMCP, an award-winning Registered Nutritionist, Nutrition Education Manager at Metagenics and author of The Personalised Nutrition Guide to Menopause: Reset, Renew and Rebalance the Body and Mind.

It's a high-fibre overnight chia pudding layered with a simple berry compote. You make it the night before, which gives the chia seeds time to soak up the liquid and set into a thick, spoonable pudding. In the morning, you just layer it up and go. It keeps you full until lunch and takes about five minutes of actual effort.

Overnight berry chia pudding

Preparation time: 5 minutes, plus overnight chilling
Serves: 2

Ingredients

• 200ml semi-skimmed milk or soy milk
• 100g Greek yogurt or soy yogurt
• 2 tsp honey or maple syrup, to taste
• 1 tsp vanilla extract, or to taste
• 45g chia seeds
• 200g fresh berries, such as blueberries or raspberries

To serve: extra fresh berries and a spoonful of yogurt

Method

1. In a jug, mix the milk, yogurt, honey or maple syrup and vanilla extract. Stir in the chia seeds and leave to sit for about 10 minutes so they start to gel. Stir again (this stops them clumping at the bottom), then cover and refrigerate overnight.
2. Put the berries in a pan with a splash of water and simmer for around five minutes, stirring now and then and breaking them up with a wooden spoon or spatula. Let the compote cool, spoon it into a container and chill overnight.
3. In the morning, give the chia pudding a good stir. If it's thicker than you'd like, loosen it with a little extra milk. Layer the pudding and berry compote in jars or bowls, then top with fresh berries and a spoonful of yogurt.

Using jars? Screw the lids on and it's ready to take to work.

Nutrition per serving

That 12g of fibre is the number worth noticing. It's around 40% of the daily recommendation, before you've even left the house.

A quick note on swaps. Soy milk and soy yogurt make this fully plant-based, and maple syrup keeps it vegan too. Frozen berries work perfectly well for the compote and are often cheaper out of season.

Why fibre deserves more attention

Fibre is an essential part of a healthy diet. Yet most adults in the UK simply aren't eating enough of it.

The recommendation for adults is around 30g a day. Most of us fall well short, with average intakes sitting closer to 20g. That gap sounds big, but closing it doesn't mean overhauling everything you eat. Small, repeatable swaps add up, and breakfast is one of the easiest places to start. Swap a low-fibre cereal for this pudding and you've covered a large chunk of the shortfall in one go.

There's a practical upside too. Chia seeds absorb liquid and form a gel, which slows digestion a little. That's a big part of why a breakfast like this tends to keep hunger at bay through the morning, rather than leaving you reaching for a biscuit at 10am.

One honest tip. If you're currently eating very little fibre, build up gradually and drink plenty of water. Jumping from low to high overnight can leave you feeling bloated while your gut adjusts.

Feeding your gut microbes

Fibre does far more than keep digestion moving.

Some types of fibre are fermented by the microbes living in your gut. As they break it down, they produce compounds called short-chain fatty acids. These play important roles within the gut itself, and their effects reach well beyond it into the rest of the body.

This is why Christine encourages people to look at the variety of plant foods they eat, as well as the total amount of fibre. Different microbes thrive on different fibres. A diet built around the same few plant foods every day feeds a narrower range of them.

So what does variety look like in practice? It's easier than it sounds. This pudding alone brings in chia seeds and at least two types of berry. Add a sprinkle of ground flaxseed, a few chopped walnuts or a handful of oats on top and you've widened the mix again without much extra effort. Through the rest of the day, think beans and lentils, whole grains, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices. They all count.

If you're working through perimenopause or menopause, gut health is a topic Christine explores in much more depth in her book. Changing hormone levels can affect digestion, so it's worth paying attention to.

Where supplements fit in

Food comes first. A varied, plant-rich diet is the foundation, and no supplement replaces it.

That said, some weeks are harder than others. A busy stretch at work or a week away can easily knock your eating habits off course. A supplement can be a helpful top-up on those days, alongside meals like this one.

Metagenics UltraFlora Fibre pairs dietary fibre with live bacterial cultures in a single sachet. The sachet format makes it an easy one to keep in a bag or desk drawer. It comes in 14 sachets if you'd like to try it first.

If you're looking for a daily probiotic, Metagenics UltraFlora Complete for Women was developed specifically with women in mind. You can compare other options in our probiotic supplements edit.

For anyone in perimenopause, Metagenics HerWellness Perimenopause is a plant-based supplement made for this stage of life. Our wider menopause supplements collection is a good place to explore what else might suit you.

If you're taking medication or managing a health condition, check with your GP or pharmacist before adding a new supplement. You can browse the full Metagenics range here.