High-Fiber Seeds: 7 Ranked by Fiber Per Ounce

Seeds get sold as a single category — a spoonful of “seeds” on your porridge, whichever jar is open. For fiber they are not one category at all. An ounce of chia carries 9.8 grams of fiber. An ounce of hemp hearts carries 1.1.

That is nearly a ninefold gap between two things that sit side by side in the same cupboard and get used the same way. Here is the whole shelf, ranked.

The ranking: seeds by fiber

From USDA FoodData Central. An ounce is 28 grams — a small handful, or about two level tablespoons for most of these.

Poppy seeds are the surprise of the table and the least useful entry on it: 19.5 grams per 100g is real, but nobody eats poppy seeds by the ounce. A teaspoon on a loaf is about half a gram.

Why chia behaves differently

Put chia in liquid and it does something no other seed here does: it swells into a gel, each seed wrapped in its own soft halo. That gel is the fiber — chia’s is unusually rich in the soluble kind, which is why two tablespoons thicken a whole glass.

It is also why chia is the easiest seed to eat in quantity. Two tablespoons is 8.3 grams of fiber and disappears into yogurt, oats or a smoothie without anyone noticing. The same two tablespoons of pumpkin seeds would be about 1.2 grams and you would definitely notice them.

The practical rules — ratios, timing and how to stop it setting like cement — are in the chia pudding recipes.

Flaxseed only counts if you grind it

Whole flaxseeds are small, hard and slippery, and a good share of them pass through whole — the fiber and the oils sealed inside the hull travel with them. Ground flax, sometimes sold as flax meal, is the form that does the work.

Two tablespoons of ground flax is about 3.8 grams of fiber. Grind it yourself in a spice grinder or buy it ground and keep it in the fridge; the fats in flax go rancid faster once the seed is opened.

The seed most people get wrong

Hemp hearts have a health-food reputation that makes them feel interchangeable with chia. They are not, at least not for this. An ounce brings 8.9 grams of protein and 1.1 grams of fiber.

That is a fine thing to be — hemp is one of the better plant proteins you can spoon onto a bowl. It is simply doing a different job, and swapping it in where a recipe calls for chia costs you about seven grams of fiber a serving.

Seeds against nuts

Seeds win, and not narrowly. The best nut in the nut ranking is the almond at 3.5 grams an ounce — roughly a third of chia. Only sesame and poppy seeds fall into the nut range at all.

Frequently asked questions

Which seed has the most fiber?

Chia, by a wide margin: 34.4 grams per 100g against flaxseed’s 27.3, and it leads per ounce and per calorie too.

Chia or flax?

Chia for fiber and for anything you want to thicken: 9.8 grams an ounce against flax’s 7.7, and it needs no grinding. Flax when you want the nutty taste in baking — ground, always.

Do I need to soak chia?

Not for the fiber — dry chia in a smoothie counts the same. Soaking changes the texture, and it is worth doing if dry seeds in your teeth bother you or you want a pudding rather than a drink.

Can I eat too many seeds?

Chia in particular is easy to overdo because it is so concentrated: two ounces is nearly 20 grams of fiber in one sitting. Increase gradually and drink water with it; the symptoms page covers what is normal while you adjust.

Seeds are the densest fiber on the shelf, which is why they turn up in the 25g smoothie and the overnight oats. For the rest of the cupboard, see grains and beans.

For every food group on one table, see the high-fiber foods list, fifty everyday foods ranked by the gram.