Are you eating enough fruit?

As the days get shorter and colder, how I miss the sweet fruits of summer! While summer is synonymous with fresh berries and juicy melons, there are plenty of low-fodmap Aussie winter fruits available.

In this week’s blog, we dive into the fruit bowl to find out which low fodmap winter fruits are in season.

Need a recap?

For those that need a recap, fodmaps are a collection of fermentable carbohydrate molecules poorly absorbed and digested in people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and other gut health issues. The fodmap acronym stands for fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols.

We get it! It’s a mouthful. That’s why we made a quick & easy video explainer. You can watch it here.

The main fodmaps present in fruit are sorbitol (found in fruits such as apples, blackberries, peaches and plums) and excess fructose (found in cherries, figs, apples, pears and mango).

While eating a big bowl of fruit salad is a wholesome start to the day for some, it’s likely to trigger gut health symptoms in others.

But there’s no need to avoid fruit on the low fodmap diet. Just focus on choosing low fodmap options and watch your portion sizes.

What winter fruits are also low fodmap?

We’ve had a look at the Sydney fresh fruit market update to identify what’s fresh and best this winter (June) and correlated this with the Monash University FODMAP diet food guide.

Here’s the good news for fodmappers

Of the 16 seasonal fruits at their best this June, most have fodmap friendly serving sizes. One fruit – pomelo – has not been tested by Monash University for fodmap content but is likely to be similar to grapefruit.

And yes, I get it. Some of the serving sizes are small. Really small. Who eats a tiny slitver of pear or single slice of apple? Hmmm… perhaps someone that can share the rest of the fruit with a family member? Or perhaps someone who keeps their apple in the fridge and enjoys a single slice per day? Or perhaps someone that’s really committed to microbiome diversity and loves to nourish their gut bugs with variety?

The temptation might be to have a bit of pear and a bit of apple to make a fruit salad, but that could lead to fodmap stacking. You can however pair fruits with DIFFERENT types of fodmap content, but not overload on fruits with the same fodmap content.

And then there’s the banana drama… Bananas have a bad reputation among fodmappers. But you can enjoy bananas on a low fodmap diet, depending on their ripeness. As bananas ripen, they produce oligos-fructans making them high fodmap, so choose ‘just ripe’ bananas (hint - tinge of green on stalks, no black spots, firm to touch, low aroma). What if you don’t like firm bananas but prefer ripe ones? Just reduce your serving size to 1/3 of a medium banana (35g).

And don’t forget to continuously test your fodmap triggers to ensure that you’re not restricting foods unnecessarily.

Get fruity

Low fodmap fruits are a great option for wintertime eating. They are nutritious and provide a variety of gut health benefits. Plus, eating seasonally will ensure you’re eating the fruit at its best and also at its cheapest!

If a bowl of fruit salad isn’t inviting on a cold, wintry morning, try mashing banana into your porridge or reigniting a love of all things citrus.

Happy eating!