Wait.. Can I Still Eat Fruit?

Wait… Can I Still Eat Fruit? - Keeping an eye on blood sugar without declaring war on the fruit bowl

When I started paying serious attention to my A1C, something strange happened. I began looking suspiciously at perfectly innocent food.

Bread? Obviously, I knew we needed to have a conversation.

Cake? Cake and I have a long and complicated history.

But then I got to fruit. Fruit?! Surely strawberries hadn’t joined the enemy. And what about peaches? Bananas? Watermelon?

At some point you start wondering whether you’re supposed to survive on chicken, cauliflower and determination.

So I went looking for an answer and here’s the good news:

People watching their blood sugar can still eat fruit.

Fruit contains carbohydrates and natural sugar, so yes, it can raise blood sugar. But fruit also gives us fiber, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients.

The trick isn’t necessarily eliminating fruit. It’s understanding the portion.

The 15-Gram Starting Point

One helpful guideline from the American Diabetes Association is to think of a serving of fruit as approximately 15 grams of carbohydrate.

Depending on the fruit, that might look roughly like:

• Apple: 1 small apple
• Orange: 1 small orange
• Pear: 1 small pear
• Banana: about ½ banana
• Berries: roughly ¾–1 cup
• Melon: roughly ¾–1 cup
• Frozen or canned fruit without added sugar: about ½ cup

Exact carbohydrate amounts vary depending on the fruit and its size, so these aren’t magical boundaries. They’re simply useful visual guides.

In other words:

The banana has NOT been expelled from the kingdom.

🍌: “I KNEW I WAS INNOCENT.”

Calm down, Banana. We’re still only eating half of you.

What About My Beloved Peach?

This was an important question for me because I happen to believe a really good ripe peach is one of life’s little gifts. And when a peach gets perfectly ripe and you can smell it before you’ve even picked it up? We’re eating the peach.

We’re just not pretending fruit has zero carbohydrates because it grew on a tree. A small whole peach can fit perfectly well into an eating plan that takes blood sugar into consideration. That’s the lesson I’m trying to learn over and over:

I don’t have to be afraid of food. I need to understand it.

Whole Fruit Has an Advantage

Whenever possible, whole fruit is my first choice. Why? Because I’m actually eating something. There’s chewing involved. There’s fiber. There’s volume. There’s satisfaction.

Juice is different. A glass of juice can deliver the carbohydrates from several pieces of fruit very quickly without giving me the same fullness I’d get from sitting down and eating the actual fruit.

Dried fruit is another sneaky little character. It’s still fruit. It hasn’t committed a crime. But removing the water makes the serving surprisingly small. A couple tablespoons of dried fruit can contain around the same carbohydrates as a much larger serving of fresh fruit.

Two tablespoons of raisins: “Hello!”

Me: “That’s it?”

Raisins: “We are extremely concentrated individuals.”

Can I Eat Fruit With Something Else?

Sometimes pairing fruit with something containing protein or healthy fat can make a snack more satisfying.

Depending on what you enjoy, that might mean fruit with:

• a small handful of nuts
• peanut or another nut butter
• cheese
• plain or lower-sugar Greek yogurt
• another protein-containing food

It isn’t a rule that fruit must always have a chaperone. But if eating fruit by itself leaves you rummaging through the refrigerator twenty minutes later asking, “Okay, what else do we have?”, pairing it with something more substantial may help.

And What About Berries?

Berries get a particularly nice little gold star. Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries provide fiber along with vitamins and other nutrients, and you generally get a pretty generous portion for your carbohydrates compared with some other fruits.

That doesn’t mean they’re the only fruit someone watching blood sugar can eat.

There is no Fruit Hunger Games.

“May the lowest glycemic load be ever in your favor.”

No.

We’re not doing that.

Fruit Isn’t the Same Thing as Candy

This is another distinction that helped me. The natural sugar in fruit still counts toward carbohydrates. I’m not pretending otherwise. But eating a bowl of strawberries isn’t nutritionally equivalent to eating candy simply because both contain sugar.

Whole fruit brings fiber, water, vitamins, minerals and plant nutrients along for the ride. That matters.

Most Important: Learn What Works for YOU

There isn’t one perfect amount of carbohydrate that everyone with diabetes or a high A1C should eat. Our bodies, medications, activity levels and nutritional needs are different. That’s why I’m treating these portions as starting points rather than commandments carved into a watermelon.

What I’m Learning

For years, I’ve had a tendency to think about food in categories:

Good.

Bad.

Allowed.

Not allowed.

I’m trying to get away from that. I want to be able to look at a peach and think:

That’s a carbohydrate. It’s also nutritious. I know approximately how much I’m eating. And I’m going to enjoy it.

That’s very different from:

PEACH DETECTED. A1C EMERGENCY. ABORT MISSION.

Because I’m discovering that taking care of myself doesn’t have to mean taking every enjoyable food away from myself. Sometimes it simply means learning what a reasonable amount looks like.

So yes. I’m keeping fruit. I’m keeping peaches. I’m keeping strawberries.

And Banana has been permitted to remain in the kingdom under supervised release.

🍌

He’s agreed to the terms.