Legumes in general are highly underrated as a nutritional source. I have gotten in the habit of adding a handful of lentils to just about everything I cook on the stove. Adds nice texture to rice dishes, adds vitamins and fiber. Win all around.

Coffee is loaded with fiber as well.

@whysthsncnsmrst: I find a cup of coffee helps me unload the fiber.

For a while I was picking up muffins from McD's because they're cheap. Fruit n Fiber. Can't go wrong, right? Well why the heck was it greasing the paper bag worse than the hashbrowns?!

@whysthsncnsmrst: Coffee BEANS are high in fiber, but brewed coffee is not likely to have much if any fiber.

Eat whole grains and plenty of vegetables and your only problem might be getting too much fiber.

Yes, I'll acknowledge i'm pretty weird and this isn't for most people out there, but i'll toss in some stuff I eat, from least to most crazy:

Ground Flaxseed- i put it on salads, adds texture I find not unpleasant. Omega 3s, all kinds of minerals and other nutritious stuff.

Eat Whole apple, including core - yes, i know the seeds contain arsenic - but you don't digest them and there's such a small amount you'd have to eat bushels a day

Ground up orange peel. Tons of fiber, natural source of vitamin C (for some reason more beneficial / readily absorbed than supplements)

@lpranal: Likewise, if you bake, you can easily throw some ground orange peel into the batter and get some awesome orange flavor.

Try eating the carpeting.

A friend of mine swore by Fiber One until I pointed out in the ingredients that it was sweetened with aspartame, at which point he groaned with disgust. Just because something is marketed as "healty" or healthful doesn't mean it is. Except for Cocoa Pebbles. That crap rocks!

@dorianh49: There's nothing wrong with aspartame.

Wheat dextrose is tasteless and dissolves easily.

@ChemicallyInert: Ack! I meant wheat dextrin. My bad.

@lpranal: It's actually cyanide that apple seeds contain, but not in particularly large or accessible doses unless you chew them or eat a lot. Cherry pits and peach pits can deliver a greater whack, so don't be masticating those. See [www.snopes.com]

Psyllium capsules. They sell huge bottles at Sams for next to nothing. A few of these per day and you'll have your fiber in spite of an all-Frito Lay diet.

@ChemicallyInert: Aside from the fact that it gives me seizures?

@ChemicallyInert: Dissolution means it ain't gonna clean you out, buddy. That's what all this "NOW WITH ADDED FIBER!!!!!!111" crap is. Its the kind they can put on their nutrition facts but its gonna do jack for your innards.

You gotta eat the roughage if you want that, sorry.

Ugh -- promoting fiber intake as if there's evidence it's good for you. Hint: Don't assume because something is widely thought that it's based in evidence.

Here:

[donmatesz.blogspot.com]

You might feel surprised to learn that not one experimental study has proven any beneficial effect or human requirement for fiber.

...First, human breast milk contains no fiber, and infants have normal, healthy bowel function when exclusively breast fed - which by the way provides them with a high fat diet. In contrast, if fed high fiber foods, infants can experience colic due to accumulation of gas causing bloating of the intestine.

Second, several primitive groups, such as Inuit and Chukchi, eat or ate fiber-free diets and have or had no signs of illness, such as "constipation," appendicitis, diverticular disease, or colorectal cancer commonly attributed to so-called fiber deficiency.

In fact, experimental studies (not epidemiological, which establish nothing) show high fiber intake to damage the gut and promote colon cell abnormalities.

@Amy Alkon: "infants have normal, healthy bowel function when exclusively breast fed "

HA! That's a big fat freakin' lie. They also claim that when exclusively breast fed, their shit don't stink. That's a lie too.

@Amy Alkon: Pretty strong words. Sadly, not true. Maybe you've read the papers, and take exception with the research, and that is a separate issue. However, there is research out there, peer-reviewed scientific research that has been published showing effects, positive effects of increased fiber on health. For example, a 2008 review by Aleixandre & Miguel (CRITICAL REVIEWS IN FOOD SCIENCE AND NUTRITION 48: 905-912) covers many of them, including the "...principal beneficial effects of a fiber-rich diet in these patients are: prevention of obesity, improved glucose levels, and control of the profile of blood lipids. We now also know that dietary fiber may favor the control of arterial blood pressure. Animal experiments have also shown the benefit of different types of fiber on these variables."

They then go on to suggest that there is hope that fiber may be useful in metabolic syndrome.

(The paper is not public access or I'd link it).

Do you need other citations?

Read the chapter on fiber in Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes -- don't spit up a citation or two. He is probably the finest investigative science journalist out there, and an exhaustive researcher. Look up his work in the New York Times, New York Magazine, and Science if you aren't willing to buy his book.

People throw around the words "peer-reviewed" like they mean "TRUE! TRUE!"

There are more "peers" positively reviewing the work of people in the medical profession that is not based in science than people could believe. I've been tormenting one of them for months -- a guy who presented at a science conference I went to, who showed a slide that was based in bullshit, not evidence, and who refused to take a second look at the research of Ancel "Selection Bias" Keys, as I like to call him (among other things), for the crap research the current highly unhealthy, high carb/low-fat American diet is largely based on.

You don't read one study, or several studies, you read exhaustively, and there are few people who do that. And few people out there who can see the flaws and limitations in a study -- and all studies are flawed; some are just more flawed or less flawed.

I asked Taubes whether it seems warranted to take 5,000 iu of vitamin D. He told me it would take him months to read all the studies before he could tell me. Again, anybody can throw around a citation or two.

And I linked to the guy's blog that I did simply because I can't quote from Taubes book without retyping, and I've been doing that all day and I'm tired.

It's a tragedy, the fraud that has been perpetrated on the American public by careerists and hacks who call themselves scientists and put themselves forward as evidence-based thinkers. And their promoters, people like you.

@subtlefrog: Very good points.
Let's go with the "eat real food, instead" option. Natural amounts of fiber, vitamins, and nutrients.

I seriously doubt loading up on OMG FIBERRZZZ is going to help you do anything but sit on the john all day if you're eating big macs and washing it down with 64oz of coke.

@whysthsncnsmrst: @Doug Nelson: You != everyone else.

When I hear fiber I immediately think of fiber intertubes...

@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): It stinks, but not like it does after they start eating. Once they move to solids, it makes the breastmilk poo smell like roses.

@Amy Alkon: Peer review not perfect, but it is the most reliable method of verifying the work of researchers. You act like the referees are reading a study of fiber consumption and they go, "oh yeah, I agree that fiber is good for you. Check plus!" when actually they review the methods used to get that result. Peer review is certainly better than the alternative, which seems to be, unquestioning belief in one guy that reads a lot.

@Amy Alkon: Nothing like blogspot for good, peer-reviewed science.

@Amy Alkon: You're really making yourself sound like a crazy person. BIG FIBER is not out to get humanity. If you don't feel you need more fiber in your life, by all means don't eat any!

But please don't talk to those of us who listen to our doctors as though we're to be pitied.

I'm sure I don't eat my daily ounce of fiber but I still number 2 every day without fail... Hmmm... Something's quite wrong with me, I think.