Healthy fruits – Fructose content edition

I put together a list of fruits and their fructose content, in relation to their overall carbs content (carbs usually being glucose). The idea here is that healthy fruits should (a) minimise fructose, and (b) minimise sugars overall.

There is a bit of a controversy going on about fruits vs vegetables (or rather, whether fruits are “almost” vegetables), and also about which fruits are better than others. Clearly the question is rather complex, but certainly one aspect of it is the fructose content, where less is better – Mother Jones suggests to restrict overall fructose to 50g/day, and not all in one session because of the strain the fructose puts on the liver (see reference here).

As an aside, there is a UK froyo company who appears to rather outrageously claim that their product is super-healthy, one argument being that it does not use sugar but agave syrup which seems to be 90% fructose – compare that to high-fructose corn syrup at 60%ish fructose and I guess you can figure out for yourself what is worse… details here.

Finally, this is also important when considering whether or not to drink fruit juices. Some people seem to believe that they are alright, especially if freshly squeezed – I have to admit I was in this camp not long ago. Now firstly, freshly squeezed, with loads of pulp left is of course better than filtered and from concentrate – no doubt about it. Arguably drinking the equivalent of one orange (apple, whatever …) in the form of orange juice is almost equivalent to eating the fruit. So there is nothing wrong with a juice as dessert or snack. But of course this is not what usually happens – if juice is used as a thirst quencher one gulps down maybe 1/2l of juice in a few minutes. So in this context one might as well go for a Coke rather than kidding oneself of being health conscious. Otherwise if thirsty, drink water.

Without further ado now however to the comparison of fruits. All the data is sourced here, and the fruits are sorted alphabetically in the table. The Total Fructose Equivalents number is defined as fructose + 50% of sucrose. It is provided as percentage of total sugars (abbreviation: TFE%S)

	TFE%S	Sugars
	perc	g/100g
Apples	70%	13.3
Apricots	35%	9.3
Bananas	38%	15.6
Blackberries	53%	8.1
Blueberries	51%	7.3
Cantaloupe melons	52%	8.7
Cherries, sour	44%	8.1
Cherries, sweet	43%	14.6
Dates	35%	64.2
Figs	43%	6.9
Grapefruits	47%	6.2
Grapes	42%	18.1
Guavas	40%	6
Honeydew melons	36%	8.2
Jackfruits	49%	8.4
Kiwis	47%	10.5
Lemons	44%	2.5
Limes	50%	0.4
Mamey Apple	69%	6.5
Mangoes	53%	14.8
Nectarines	36%	8.5
Oranges	50%	9.2
Papayas	61%	5.9
Peaches	47%	8.7
Pears	70%	10.5
Pineapples	31%	11.9
Plums	44%	7.5
Pomegranates	49%	10.1
Granadillas	43%	11.2
Raisins	52%	65
Raspberries	48%	9.5
Starfruits	51%	7.1
Strawberries	52%	5.8
Tomatoes	50%	2.8
Watermelons	57%	9

This is the data plotted as a chart: