Why is it so important?Ĭarbohydrates are the nutrient that influences blood sugar and A1c the most. And certainly much less than an orange with 14 g of net carbs.Īll this talk about carbs. Overall, raspberries will have less of an impact on blood sugar than a clementine. Because raspberries are a high fiber fruit with a whopping 4 g of fiber, that brings your net carbs down to just 3.3 g. This is almost as many carbs as the clementine orange, until you subtract the amount of fiber. The raspberries, for example, have 7.3 g of total carbs in a half cup serving. A food higher in fiber will most often have a lower impact. This means paying attention to the net carbs in a food is one way to estimate how much that food is going to affect your blood sugar. Since the body doesn’t absorb fiber, net carbs are the ‘available carbs’ left for your body to absorb. Net carbs are calculated by taking the amount of total carbs and subtracting the amount of fiber (Total carbs minus fiber = net carbs).

The clementine has half the carbs of the regular orange, which is why clementine’s or mandarin’s are more acceptable as a fruit of choice.įinally, check out the net carbs for each of the three berries listed. You can see the differences between the medium sized regular orange and the small clementine. While an orange is somewhat less carbs/sugar than the fruit juice, it is still at least double the carbs of other fruits.

While juice is often advertised as a healthy addition to your breakfast, it is actually just a sugar bomb that will send your blood sugar levels upwards in a hurry.Īn easy rule is: when it comes to fruit juice, just say no! Not surprisingly, it has over 25 g of sugar in just one 8 oz glass. Let’s take a peek at the fruit chart below and pay special attention to the amount of net carbs and the glycemic index of each.įirst, let’s consider the orange juice. Yes, they taste delicious, but by the time they have been canned, sweetened, and processed, they are closer to candy than they are to real fruit. Those are often canned in syrup or fruit juice that is packed with added sugar. Just to be clear, we are not referring to the canned mandarin oranges that are pre-packaged and sitting on a store shelf. Luckily, there are miniature oranges called clementine’s or mandarin’s that contain relatively less sugar and fewer carbs, because of their small size.

Your average, run-of-the-mill orange is about the size of a baseball and contains more sugar than is wise for a person with diabetes (or prediabetes) to consume in one sitting. This doesn’t mean that oranges are completely off limits, though.Ĭertain types of oranges may be OK to eat in small quantities. And in the end, all those carbs and sugar only end up in one place – your bloodstream! While the sugar is “natural” fruit sugar, it is still sugar nonetheless. The first thing you may notice about oranges is that their carbohydrate count is pretty high.Īlthough there is some dietary fiber (3.1 g per orange), there is just not enough fiber to outweigh the effects of the 17 g of carbs, especially when over half of them are straight sugar. Let’s look at the nutrition facts for one medium-sized orange (131 g): While lemons, limes, and grapefruit all fit nicely into a low carb diet, unlike other citrus fruits, oranges are not naturally low in sugar. They are also members of the citrus family. Oranges are bright and colorful fruits grown in tropical regions of the world.

Grapefruit carbs minus fiber