Having a diet high in fiber does more than just support healthy bowel movements. Dietary fiber plays a vital role in everything from cardiovascular health and glycemic control to weight loss and gut health.
But while most people know getting adequate fiber is important, most people still don’t get enough. Something as simple as eating more fruit and vegetables or adding a dietary fiber supplement into your stack can go a long way to supporting better health and well-being.
We’re giving you our top pick for the best fiber supplement of 2025 and the reasons why fiber is important. Plus, the best food sources to boost your intake.
Best Gluten-Free Fiber Supplement: Performance Lab® Prebiotic
Probiotics have been touted as the latest and greatest supplement for gut health, but what if we told you we have something better?
Performance Lab® Prebiotic is a 2-in-1 prebiotic + soluble fiber supplement designed to support healthy metabolic and microbiome performance.
Because most probiotic supplements are fragile and unpredictable, you never know what you’re getting, which doesn’t spell good news for your microbiome.
Instead of adding in more colonies, Prebiotic instead nourishes your existing probiotic colony with Orafti® Synergy1 (Inulin-FOS from chicory root) for robust growth and health. As a result, Prebiotic delivers more reliable, natural, and comfortable microbiome support.
Plus, the addition of prebiotic fiber supports digestion, immune function, fat loss, and more—all features you wouldn’t get from most probiotic supplements.
Key Features:
- Orafti® Synergy1: Oligofructose-enriched inulin (Inulin-FOS) from chicory root
- 100% natural, prebiotic-infused NutriCaps® from pullulan (fermented tapioca)
Key Benefits:
- Supports digestive regularity, gut comfort, and efficient nutrient absorption
- Promotes healthy immune system performance in the GI tract
- Nourishes existing gut microbiome rather than introducing new probiotic strains
- Helps fat loss by controlling appetite and reducing food caloric density
- Supports bone health by enhancing calcium absorption
- Supports heart health by regulating bad cholesterol absorption
What Is A Fiber Supplement?
Regardless of what type of diet you follow, getting enough fiber is important. It’s involved in everything from gut health and immune function to weight management and cardiovascular health. But for most people, they’re just not getting enough of it.
The Standard American Diet (SAD) that most people consume is loaded with refined carbohydrates, processed sugars, and unhealthy oils and severely lacking dietary fiber.
As a result, people don’t consume near what they should. But whether you’re eating a whole-food diet or not, adding in a fiber supplement can be immensely beneficial for your health.
For anyone looking to reap the cardio-protective properties of fiber, getting enough through diet is the better option because you’re also getting the other nutrients.
However, for anyone that doesn’t have access to certain foods or wants to boost their fiber intake, a fiber supplement can be a great addition to your supplement stack to ensure you’re meeting (or exceeding) your daily goals.
Fiber supplements are typically a mix of soluble and insoluble dietary fiber, but what you get will be dictated by your specific needs.
The guidelines for fiber intake are based on the link between a high‐fiber diet and a reduced risk for cardiovascular disease 1.
The Institute of Medicine recommends consuming 14g of fiber per 1000 calories, which, for the average person, translates to about 25g/day for women and 38g/day for men.
However, because older adults tend to consume fewer calories, the recommended intake is 21g for women and 30g for men over 50.
But perhaps the more staggering thing is that only about 5% of the U.S. population actually consumes the recommended amount of fiber. The average? Just 15g, while people following a low-carb diet consume less than 10g.
While you may know it’s important to consume fiber, why do we actually need to?
5 Benefits Of Fiber Supplements
1. Glycemic Control
Dysfunctional glucose regulation is one of the biggest contributes to diseases like diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and insulin resistance and can cause major long-term health consequences if not controlled. While genetics can be to blame for glucose dysfunction, the majority of it stems from a diet high in refined foods and low in fiber.
That’s because fiber has a profound effect on how fast glucose is absorbed into the bloodstream. Under normal circumstances, nutrients from digested food are delivered to the small intestine immersed in a low‐viscosity (thin) liquid called chyme; this liquid is mixed with digestive enzymes required for nutrient degradation 1.
Once broken down, the nutrients are readily absorbed in the small intestine. However, when you throw a gel‐forming fiber like psyllium or β‐glucan into the mix, it significantly increases the viscosity of chyme (dose-dependent), making it thicker.
The increase in thickness slows down the interaction between enzymes and nutrients, and ultimately slows down the absorption of these nutrients—including glucose—into the bloodstream 2. As a result, your blood sugar isn’t peaking nearly as fast as it would without fiber.
However, it’s important to remember that non-vicious fibers don’t elicit the same effects on glycemic control.
2. Weight Loss
On top of improving glycemic control, adding more fiber to your diet can also be good for your waistline. Because high-fiber foods tend to leave the stomach slower, not only do they prevent glycemic dysfunction that can lead to weight gain, but they also reduce appetite by increasing satiation.
A 2010 study looked at the effects of gel-forming fibers on 141 patients with metabolic syndrome 3. Patients were given 3.5g fiber twice a day before breakfast and dinner or a placebo.
The group consuming the non-fermented fiber (psyllium) showed sustained weight loss over the entire six‐month test period with an average of 3.3kg lost. On top of that, they also showed significant improvements in fasting blood glucose, insulin, and LDL cholesterol.
3. Supports Gut Health
The gut is perhaps one of the most important aspects of overall health and has ties to more than just digestion. Poor gut health—this can encompass dysbiosis, leaky gut, etc.—has been implicated in a wide variety of diseases, including allergies, autoimmunity, diabetes, autism, obesity, and even cancer 4.
There are over a trillion microorganisms that inhabit the gut. This mix is composed of both beneficial and harmful bacteria that normally maintain a balance to maintain health.
However, diet and lifestyle factors can be a major hindrance to this balance, and when it’s thrown off-kilter, it can lead to disease. Regarding gut health, we talk about two types of bacteria: probiotics and prebiotics.
Probiotics are the organisms themselves that live in the gut, whereas prebiotics are the food these bacteria use for fuel. Without sufficient prebiotic fiber intake, the beneficial bacteria cannot thrive, creating an imbalance and favoring an environment for disease.
However, prebiotic fiber is important to keep the beneficial bacteria flourishing and promote a healthy, balanced microbiome. On top of that, the good bacteria metabolize the fiber to produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) they confer their own health benefits 5, 6.
4. Bowel Regularity
Both soluble and insoluble fiber are essential for supporting bowel movements. Soluble fiber absorbs water to form a gelatinous, viscous substance fermented by bacteria in the digestive tract.
Insoluble fiber, on the other hand, functions to bulk up the stool and support proper excretion 7. If you’re dealing with loose, watery stools, adding more fiber into your diet can help to firm it up and make it easier to pass.
While fiber isn’t completely essential for promoting bowel movements, it is important for supporting the health of colonocytes (colon cells) that maintain a healthy and efficient colon.
5. Cardiovascular Health
Fiber is perhaps one of the best supplements for lowering cholesterol and improving cardiovascular health. There are several observational findings that show a lower incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD) in people consuming a diet high in fiber. Why?
Fiber is thought to decrease serum total, and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations as well as improve insulin resistance, all of which have a positive effect on cardiovascular health 8.
Other studies show that dietary fiber can exert protective effects on the risk of CVD and CHD, as viscous fibers can attenuate postprandial blood glucose and lipid rises, which protects against endothelial damage.
The formation of the gel also slows gastric emptying to increase satiety and reduce the potential for weight gain. On top of that, soluble fiber and resistant starch molecules are fermented by bacteria in the colon to produce SCFAs that can help to reduce cholesterol levels 9.
If that wasn’t enough, many of these high-fiber foods contain other beneficial compounds that exert protective effects on the cardiovascular system.
For example, grains contain antioxidants, hormonally active lignans, phytosterols, amylase inhibitors, and saponins that have all been shown to influence risk factors associated with CHD 10.
Tips To Boost Your Fiber Intake
On top of getting yourself a good fiber supplement like Performance Lab Prebiotic, there are plenty of foods that contain prebiotic fiber. Here’s a list of the 18 best foods loaded with prebiotic fiber:
- Chicory root
- Dandelion greens
- Garlic
- Jerusalem artichoke
- Onions
- Leeks
- Asparagus
- Barley
- Bananas
- Konjac root
- Apples
- Oats
- Flaxseeds
- Burdock root
- Cocoa
- Bacon root
- Jicama
- Seaweed
Eating a diet rich in high-fiber foods is important to maintain health and well-being, but throwing in a fiber supplement along with it can ensure you’re not being lumped into the statistic of people who don’t consume enough fiber.
References
- KV Lambeau, JW McRorie Jr. Fiber supplements and clinically proven health benefits: How to recognize and recommend an effective fiber therapy.J Am Assoc Nurse Pract. 2017;29(4):216-223.
- JW McRorie Evidence-Based Approach to Fiber Supplements and Clinically Meaningful Health Benefits, Part 2: What to Look for and How to Recommend an Effective Fiber Therapy. Nutr Today. 2015;50(2):90-97.
- A G Derosa, M Bove, F Imola, C Borghi, A Gaddi. Psyllium improves dyslipidemaemia, hyperglycaemia and hypertension, while guar gum reduces body weight more rapidly in patients affected by metabolic syndrome following an AHA Step 2 diet.Mediterranean Journal of Nutrition and Metababolism. 2010;3:47–54.
- AK DeGruttola, D Low, A Mizoguchi, E Current Understanding of Dysbiosis in Disease in Human and Animal Models.Inflamm Bowel Dis. 2016;22(5):1137-1150.
- HD Dietary fiber and prebiotics and the gastrointestinal microbiota.Gut Microbes. 2017;8(2):172-184.
- A Aoun, F Darwish, N Hamod. The Influence of the Gut Microbiome on Obesity in Adults and the Role of Probiotics, Prebiotics, and Synbiotics for Weight Loss. Prev Nutr Food Sci. 2020;25(2):113-123.
- J Yang, HP Wang, L Zhou, CF Xu. Effect of dietary fiber on constipation: a meta analysis.World J Gastroenterol. 2012;18(48):7378-7383.
- AT Erkkilä, AH Fiber and cardiovascular disease risk: how strong is the evidence?.J Cardiovasc Nurs. 2006;21(1):3-8.
- DE Threapleton, DC Greenwood, CE Evans, et al. Dietary fibre intake and risk of cardiovascular disease: systematic review and meta-analysis. 2013;347:f6879.
- J Slavin. Whole grains and human health.Nutr Res Rev. 2004;17(1):99-110.