Stroll through your neighborhood market, and you’ll notice that fiber is turning up in some pretty unlikely places. Sure, you’ll find it in the usual suspects, like 100 percent whole-grain bread, pasta, cereal and brown rice. But it’s also popping up in breakfast bars, yogurt, cottage cheese, soups and even ice cream.

Diets rich in fiber have been linked to lower lousy (LDL) cholesterol, better blood-sugar control and improved digestive health — and they keep you thinner, too. Yet most people have a pretty sorry showing in the roughage department, getting only 10 to 12 grams a day. That’s pocket change compared with the 21 to 25 grams most women and the 30 to 38 grams most guys should be getting. No surprise: Our appetite for processed food has stripped away much of the natural fiber in our diets. When grains like wheat are refined, they not only lose most of their bulk, they also shed more than 50 percent of their B vitamins and 90 percent of their vitamin E. And once their outer layers are stripped away (that’s what happens during refining), they’re also digested much more quickly, causing their sugar to flood the bloodstream and increase the risk of fatty liver disease that promotes inflammation in your body. And that’s only part of the bad side of nonwhole grains.