The average American eats about 16 grams of fiber a day. The recommended target is 25 grams for women and 38 grams for men. Only about 5% of the population hits that target.

That gap matters. Fiber feeds the bacteria in your gut. They break it down and turn it into compounds that fuel the cells lining your colon, keep the gut wall strong, and help regulate your immune system. When you don't eat enough fiber, those bacteria don't have enough to work with.

This isn't about adding a supplement. Most high-fiber foods are things you'd buy anyway: beans, berries, oats, whole wheat bread, nuts. The trick is knowing which ones move the needle and how to add them without your gut punishing you for it.

What 25 grams of fiber looks like

Most people have no idea how much fiber they eat. Here's what hitting the target looks like in a normal day of eating:

Breakfast: Oatmeal made with a quarter cup of steel cut oats, topped with a cup of raspberries and a tablespoon of chia seeds. That's about 18 grams of fiber before you've left the house.

Lunch: A sandwich on whole wheat bread with whatever filling you like. Two slices of whole wheat bread add about 6 grams. Throw in a side of baby carrots and hummus and that's another 3 to 4.

Dinner: Whole wheat pasta with broccoli. The pasta adds about 6 grams, the broccoli about 5.

Snack: A handful of almonds. About 3.5 grams.

Total: roughly 40 grams. That's above the target for both men and women, and nothing on that list is unusual.

The point isn't that you need to eat exactly this. It's that fiber adds up fast once you know where it comes from. Swap a few items in your regular meals and you can close the gap without overhauling your routine.

High-fiber foods at Safeway

Beans and lentils

Signature SELECT Beans Black - 15 Oz

These are the highest-fiber items in the grocery store. Half a cup of canned lentils has 8 grams. Half a cup of black beans, kidney beans, or pinto beans has 6 to 8 grams. That's more fiber per serving than almost anything else you can buy.

Canned beans are ready to use. Open the can, rinse them (this cuts the sodium by about 40%), and add them to whatever you're making. Rice bowls, tacos, soups, salads, pasta. If you cook dried beans or lentils, the fiber per serving is the same and the cost per serving drops even further.

Safeway carries canned beans in store-brand, organic, and name-brand options.

Berries

Raspberries Prepacked - 6 Oz

Raspberries and blackberries have 8 grams of fiber per cup. That's more than a slice of whole wheat bread, more than a banana, more than most vegetables. Blueberries have about 4 grams per cup. Strawberries about 3.

Fresh or frozen, the fiber content is the same. Frozen berries are picked at peak ripeness and are available year-round.

Oats and seeds

Bob's Red Mill Steel Cut Oats - 24 Oz

A quarter cup of steel cut oats (dry) has about 5 grams of fiber. Rolled oats have about 4 grams per half cup. Both also contain a type of soluble fiber that's especially good at feeding beneficial gut bacteria.

O Organics Chia Seeds - 16 Oz

Chia seeds are the highest-fiber topping you can add to anything. Two tablespoons have about 10 grams. They absorb liquid and form a gel, which is why they work well stirred into yogurt or oatmeal. Ground flaxseed has about 4 grams per two tablespoons. Buy it ground or grind it yourself. Whole flax seeds pass through without being broken down.

Bread and wraps

Not all bread is equal for fiber. A slice of white bread has about 1 gram. A slice of whole wheat bread has about 3 grams. A sandwich on whole wheat gives you about 6 grams of fiber; one on white has about 2.

Check the ingredient list. "Wheat flour" is not whole wheat. Look for "whole wheat flour" as the first ingredient.

Some high-fiber wraps and tortillas at Safeway go much higher, with 12 to 30 grams of fiber per wrap. That fiber comes partly from added ingredients like modified wheat starch and resistant starch, not just the grain itself. It still counts toward your daily intake, but whole-food fiber comes with more nutrients.

Whole wheat pasta and grains

Barilla Whole Grain Spaghetti Pasta - 16 Oz

Whole wheat pasta has about 6 grams of fiber per serving. Regular white pasta has about 2. Triple the fiber for the same meal.

Barley has about 6 grams per cup when cooked and is high in soluble fiber. Quinoa has about 5 grams and is one of the few grains with complete protein. Brown rice has about 3.5 grams, up from 0.6 in white rice.

Vegetables and snacks

Broccoli has about 5 grams per cup when cooked. Green peas have 4.5 grams per half cup. Sweet potatoes have about 4 grams if you eat the skin. Cooked vegetables give you more fiber per serving than raw because they shrink down, so you eat more of the original food.

For snacking, popcorn is a whole grain with about 3.5 grams per three cups. Almonds have 3.5 grams per ounce. Dried figs have about 4 grams per serving.

Small swaps that add up

You don't have to overhaul your diet. A few changes can add 10 to 15 grams of fiber a day.

The easiest: switch white bread, rice, or pasta for whole wheat or brown versions. Each swap adds 3 to 4 grams per serving. A whole wheat sandwich at lunch and whole wheat pasta at dinner add about 8 grams over the white versions.

Adding half a cup of beans to something you already make (rice bowl, soup, tacos, salad) adds 7 grams in one move. A tablespoon of chia seeds stirred into yogurt or oatmeal adds 5 grams you won't even taste.

Fruit choice matters too. A cup of raspberries has 8 grams of fiber. An apple has about 4. A cup of grapes has about 2.

Pick two or three of these that fit your routine. That's usually enough to close the gap.

How to add fiber without the gas

This is the part that stops people. You read that fiber is good, buy a bag of lentils and a box of Fiber One, eat 30 grams on day one after months of eating 12, and spend the next two days bloated and miserable. Then you decide fiber doesn't agree with you.

That's not fiber disagreeing with you. That's too much, too fast.

Your gut bacteria need time to adjust to more fiber. When you suddenly flood them with food they haven't had much of, they produce extra gas as they ramp up. This is temporary. It usually settles in two to three weeks of consistent eating.

Add about 5 grams per week. If you're at 15 grams a day, aim for 20 the first week, 25 the second, and so on. Your gut bacteria adapt along the way.

Drink more water. Fiber absorbs water. Without enough fluid, it can slow things down instead of speeding them up. There's no magic number, but if you're adding fiber and feeling clogged, drink more.

Cooked over raw. If raw vegetables cause you trouble, cook them. Cooking breaks down some of the cell walls, making the fiber easier for your gut to handle. Steamed broccoli is gentler than raw broccoli.

Spread it across meals. Three meals with 8 to 10 grams each are easier on your gut than one meal with 25 grams. Loading all your fiber into one sitting gives your bacteria more to ferment at once, which means more gas at once.

Beans are worth the effort. They cause more gas than most foods because they contain certain carbohydrates your body can't break down on its own. Your gut bacteria handle them, and they produce gas doing it. Soaking dried beans overnight and cooking in fresh water reduces this. Canned beans cause less gas than dried because the canning process breaks down some of those carbohydrates. And the gas decreases as your gut bacteria adjust over a few weeks of regular eating.

Fiber supplements

Metamucil 4 in 1 Fiber Supplement Powder Sugar-Free Orange - 72 tsp

Supplements can help fill the gap while you build more fiber into your meals. They're not a replacement for high-fiber foods, which deliver vitamins, minerals, and different types of fiber that no single supplement provides. But if you're only getting 10 to 15 grams a day from food, a supplement can bridge the difference.

Safeway carries three main types:

Psyllium husk (Metamucil and store-brand equivalents) is a soluble fiber that forms a gel in water. It has the most clinical research behind it for cholesterol, blood sugar, and regularity. Start with half a dose for the first week. It thickens in liquid, so drink it quickly after mixing.

Wheat dextrin (Benefiber and store-brand equivalents) dissolves clear and is tasteless. You can mix it into coffee, soup, or water and not notice it. About 3 grams per serving. It has less research than psyllium for cholesterol but works as a prebiotic.

Methylcellulose (Citrucel) causes less gas than psyllium because your gut bacteria don't ferment it as much. It delivers less fiber per dose, but it's a good option if other supplements bother you.

All three are also available as capsules, chewables, or on-the-go packets.

Fiber and fermented foods

A 2021 Stanford study found that people who ate more fermented foods (yogurt, kefir, kimchi) developed a more diverse mix of gut bacteria. People who ate more fiber saw their existing bacteria produce more enzymes to process the extra fiber, but didn't gain the same diversity.

The researchers' take: fermented foods can help build gut diversity. Fiber feeds that diverse gut. The two work together.

A separate review of 90 studies found that combining probiotics with fiber reduced inflammation more than fiber alone.

If you're interested in the fermented foods side, we have a separate article on yogurt and gut health that covers what the research says about probiotics, how to read a yogurt label, and what to look for.