
The sugar in milk is not considered an “added sugar,” and it doesn’t overwhelm the liver the way added sugar does. A quarter-cup of milk contains about 3 grams of a natural sugar called lactose. Strawberries, apricots, grapefruit, lemon, limes, cantaloupe, nectarines, oranges, pears, blueberries, peaches, plums, apples and pineapple have glycemic loads of 6 or less. Prunes have a glycemic load of 10, whereas raisins have a glycemic load of 28.

Anything above 20 is considered very high. Ideally you should eat foods with a glycemic load of 10 or less. The good news is that dried fruit still has the fiber, and it can be a great snack as long as you are aware of how much you are eating.Īnother way to weigh the pros and cons of dried fruit is to look at glycemic load, a measure of how fast your body converts a serving of food into sugar. Raisins and dates are about 60 to 65 percent sugar, dried figs and apricots are about 50 percent sugar, and prunes are about 38 percent sugar.

The risk is that it takes more dried fruit to fill you up than whole fruits.

Dried fruit is packed with nutrients, but the drying process removes the water and concentrates a lot of fruit sugar in a very small bite. Can I eat dried fruit on a low-sugar diet?Ī. Robert Lustig of the University of California, San Francisco, calls grapes “little bags of sugar.” Enjoy bananas and grapes sparingly and opt for a variety of fruits. While most fruits make a slow journey through the digestive tract, bananas and grapes are particularly high in fructose given the amount of fiber they contain, so they give us a faster sugar spike. Why aren’t bananas and grapes recommended for people cutting sugar?Ī.
