31 High-Fiber Vegetables Ranked From Most to Least

Ask ten people to name the highest-fiber vegetable and you’ll hear broccoli seven times, kale twice, and spinach once. All ten are wrong.

Fiber is the quiet workhorse of eating well. It feeds your gut, steadies blood sugar, and keeps you full, yet most adults get barely half the recommended 25 to 38 grams a day.

The fix isn’t eating more salad. Some famous “healthy” vegetables barely register on fiber, while a few unfashionable ones are quietly loaded.

So here are 31 vegetables ranked from least fiber to most, using rough per-serving numbers since exact figures vary by size and cooking method. A few reputations will not survive the ranking.

And the vegetable at number one? Almost nobody guesses it.

31. Iceberg Lettuce

Let’s start with some honesty. Iceberg is roughly 96 percent water, and a full cup delivers maybe 1 gram of fiber.

That doesn’t make it worthless. It’s crunchy, hydrating, and lands squarely among the foods you can eat without really counting. Just don’t credit your salad with fiber work it isn’t doing.

30. Cucumbers

Cucumbers are iceberg’s spiritual sibling: water in a green jacket. Around 1 gram of fiber per cup, most of it in the peel.

If you peel them, you’re removing most of the reason they made this list at all. Leave the skin on.

29. Radishes

Radishes bring pepper and crunch but only about 1 gram of fiber per cup. They earn their spot on flavor, not function.

They’re also one of the fastest things you can grow, seed to harvest in under a month. A decent gateway crop if you’re eyeing the kitchen-scrap gardening rabbit hole.

28. Celery

Celery feels fibrous because of the strings, but those strings add up to roughly 1.5 grams per cup. Texture is not the same thing as fiber content.

Its real job is being a crunchy delivery vehicle. Load it with hummus or peanut butter and the fillings do the heavy lifting.

27. Zucchini

A cup of cooked zucchini lands near 2 grams. Modest, but it comes with almost no calories attached, which keeps the ratio respectable.

Zucchini noodles won’t match real pasta for staying power, and pretending otherwise sets you up for a 9 p.m. snack raid. Treat them as a vegetable side that happens to be noodle-shaped.

26. Bell Peppers

A whole medium bell pepper carries 2 to 3 grams of fiber plus more vitamin C than an orange. Red ones edge out green on both counts.

Sliced raw with dip, they disappear fast. Few vegetables convert skeptics as easily.

25. Tomatoes

Botanically a fruit, culturally a vegetable, and fiber-wise about 2 grams per cup either way. The skin and seeds hold most of it.

Where tomatoes shine is lycopene, which actually gets more available when cooked. One of the rare cases where the sauce beats the salad.

24. Mushrooms

Another expectation check. Mushrooms feel meaty and substantial, but a cup of cooked ones delivers only about 2 grams of fiber.

Their fiber is an unusual type called beta-glucan and chitin, which may have its own benefits. But if you’re eating mushrooms specifically for fiber, there are twenty better options below.

23. Asparagus

Asparagus offers around 3 grams per cup, plus a fiber type called inulin that gut bacteria particularly love. That makes it a regular on lists of gut-friendly foods backed by real science.

Roast it hot and fast, 425 degrees for about 12 minutes. Steamed-to-mush asparagus is how people learn to hate it.

22. Cabbage

Cabbage runs about 3 grams per cooked cup and costs less per pound than nearly anything else in produce. A single head yields an absurd amount of food.

Ferment it and you get sauerkraut, keeping the fiber and adding live cultures. Your grandmother had opinions about this, and the science has mostly taken her side.

21. Green Beans

Green beans hold steady at roughly 3 to 4 grams per cup. Fresh, frozen, or canned, the fiber barely changes.

That makes the frozen bag the smart buy most of the year. It’s one more entry in the long list of frozen foods that beat fresh on price without losing anything that matters.

20. Cauliflower

Cauliflower carries about 3 grams per cup and has spent a decade impersonating rice, pizza crust, and mashed potatoes. The impersonations are fine.

Its best mode might be the simplest: whole head, roasted dark, eaten in wedges. It also ranks well among low-carb vegetables if you’re counting net carbs.

19. Kale

Here’s the ranking’s biggest reputation casualty. Kale, the vegetable with its own decade of hype, delivers roughly 3 to 4 grams per cooked cup, mid-pack at best.

It’s still genuinely nutritious, dense with vitamins K and A. But plenty of people choked down kale salads for fiber they could have gotten from a parsnip that costs a third as much.

Myth: the trendier the green, the more fiber it has. Reality: fiber lives disproportionately in roots, pods, and squashes, the least fashionable aisle in the store.

18. Onions

Onions sit around 3 grams per cooked cup, but the number undersells them. Like asparagus, they’re rich in inulin, the prebiotic fiber your gut bacteria treat like a feast.

Since onions go into practically everything anyway, they’re the easiest invisible fiber upgrade on this list. Double the onion in any recipe and nobody complains.

17. Beets

A cup of cooked beets brings close to 4 grams of fiber and a sweetness that roasting turns almost candy-like. The stained cutting board is the toll you pay.

Don’t toss the greens on top. They’re edible, cook like chard, and carry their own fiber for free.

16. Spinach

Raw spinach is fiber-light, but cooking collapses it dramatically. A cup of cooked spinach represents a huge pile of leaves and roughly 4 grams of fiber.

That shrinkage is the trick. Nobody eats six cups of raw spinach, but everybody eats the one cooked cup it becomes.

15. Carrots

Carrots deliver about 4 grams per cooked cup, wrapped in enough natural sugar to taste like a treat. Roasted until the edges caramelize, they convert vegetable skeptics on contact.

Baby carrots and full-size carrots are the same vegetable at very different prices. Buy whole, peel if you must, and pocket the difference.

14. Okra

Okra runs around 4 grams per cup, and a good chunk of it is soluble fiber, the gel-forming kind that slows digestion. Yes, that gel is also the slime people complain about.

High dry heat solves it. Roasted or charred okra crisps up completely and keeps every gram.

13. Sweet Corn

Corn gets treated like a nutritional punchline, which is unfair. A cup of kernels holds about 4 grams of fiber, more than kale manages.

Technically it’s a grain, but nobody eats corn on the cob and calls it toast. It counts here.

12. Turnip Greens

The tops of turnips, usually thrown away, pack roughly 5 grams of fiber per cooked cup. That beats the trendy greens by a comfortable margin.

Stores practically give them away, when they charge at all. It’s the kind of free-food knowledge that powered the frugal dinners whole generations were raised on.

11. Broccoli

Here it is, the vegetable most people guess for number one, sitting at eleven. A cup of cooked broccoli holds a solid but unspectacular 5 grams of fiber.

To be fair, broccoli is a strong all-rounder, with protein numbers that also place it high on the protein-per-vegetable rankings. It just isn’t the fiber king, and eat the stems, since they carry a surprising share of the total.

Fast Math: 5 grams per cup means you’d need five to six cups of broccoli to hit a day’s fiber target. Nobody is doing that.

10. Sweet Potatoes

A medium baked sweet potato with skin lands around 4 to 5 grams. The skin matters; peeling costs you a real chunk of the total.

They also happen to be one of the most filling foods you can buy per dollar. Fiber and fullness travel together more often than not.

9. Potatoes With the Skin On

A regular baked potato, skin included, delivers roughly 4 to 5 grams of fiber. Cool it after cooking and part of the starch converts to resistant starch, which behaves like bonus fiber in your gut.

Peeled and mashed, the number drops hard. The skin is doing most of the work, so stop composting the best part.

8. Brussels Sprouts

Brussels sprouts pack roughly 4 to 6 grams per cooked cup, depending on size and preparation. Enough to outrank their entire cabbage family.

If you hate them, you probably met them boiled. Halved, oiled, and roasted until the outer leaves char, they’re a different vegetable entirely.

7. Pumpkin

Plain canned pumpkin holds around 7 grams of fiber per cup, and it costs about the same in April as it does in October. It’s a year-round food trapped in a one-month reputation.

Stir it into oatmeal, chili, or pasta sauce and it vanishes into the background. A can in the pantry earns its spot among the longest-lasting pantry staples.

6. Parsnips

The pale carrot nobody buys carries roughly 6 to 7 grams of fiber per cooked cup. That’s kale’s number doubled, at a fraction of the hype.

Roasted, they go sweet and nutty. Mashed half-and-half with potatoes, they upgrade the fiber of the whole bowl without announcing themselves.

5. Collard Greens

Collards are the quiet champion of the leafy greens, at roughly 7 to 8 grams per cooked cup. No green on this list comes close.

Southern kitchens never needed a study to know collards were serious food. Slow-simmered with a ham hock or quick-sautéed with garlic, the fiber shows up either way.

4. Acorn Squash

A cup of baked acorn squash delivers somewhere around 9 grams of fiber, which is startling for something that tastes like a mild dessert. Winter squashes in general are fiber heavyweights hiding in plain sight.

Halve it, roast it cut-side down, and the flesh scoops out like custard. Butter and a pinch of salt finish the job.

Fast Math: one roasted half can cover roughly a quarter to a third of your entire day’s fiber. One vegetable, one pan.

3. Green Peas

The freezer-aisle afterthought holds roughly 8 to 9 grams of fiber per cooked cup, plus around 8 grams of protein. Almost nothing else in the vegetable world pairs those two numbers.

Frozen peas are picked and flash-frozen at peak, cost a couple dollars a bag, and keep for months. As foods worth stockpiling go, they’re about as easy as it gets.

2. Lima Beans

The most unfairly hated vegetable in America lands at number two, with roughly 9 grams of fiber per cooked cup and protein to match. Generations of kids pushed a fiber powerhouse around their plates.

The rehab plan is simple: butter, salt, and not boiling them into gray paste. Simmered with garlic and finished with olive oil, they’re creamy in a way that surprises people.

If childhood ruined limas for you permanently, edamame plays a similar position. But give them one adult chance first.

1. Artichokes

Not broccoli. Not kale. The highest-fiber vegetable in the produce section is the artichoke, and it isn’t a close race.

One medium cooked artichoke delivers somewhere around 7 to 10 grams of fiber, roughly a third of many people’s daily target in a single vegetable. A cup of cooked hearts performs nearly as well with none of the labor.

The fiber profile is special too. Artichokes are one of the richest sources of inulin anywhere, the prebiotic fiber that gut bacteria ferment into compounds your body actually uses.

The whole-artichoke ritual, leaf by leaf with melted butter, is half the fun. But the shortcut is legitimate: canned or frozen hearts, tossed into pasta or roasted with lemon, deliver most of the payoff in two minutes.

So the vegetable that wins the fiber crown is the one most people have never cooked at home. Maybe that’s the real finding here: the best answers in the produce aisle are rarely the loudest ones.

The Fiber Shortlist

If you only remember five: artichokes, lima beans, green peas, acorn squash, and collard greens. Rotate those in and your fiber numbers jump without a single supplement.

Notice what they have in common. Cheap, unfashionable, and mostly ignored, the same profile as the everyday foods with surprising benefits that never get the headlines.

Add more fiber gradually, over a couple of weeks with plenty of water, and your digestive system will thank you for the patience. Then go build a salad from foods with almost fake-looking calorie counts and put the new rankings to work.