Lemon

Why lemon is rated low

Lemon comes in low, and that rating is estimated from what the fruit is made of rather than from a weighed, measured serving, so treat it as a well grounded estimate rather than a lab figure. No FODMAP subgroup is recorded for lemon at all, which is why the juice and the zest do not carry a flagged mechanism the way many fruits do. A Small serving reads LOW, and the level climbs to MODERATE at a Large serving as the total load of the fruit builds up. The practical upshot is that the squeeze, the wedge and the scraping of zest that lemon normally shows up as sit at the low end, while a dish built around a lot of lemon is the one worth pausing over.

What changes your risk

• How much actually goes in The published pattern is a climb, not a flat line. A Small serving is low and a Large serving is moderate, so brightening a dressing or a glass of water lands in a very different place from a lemon dessert or a lemon heavy marinade poured over the whole plate.
• What else is on the plate Lemon carries no recorded subgroup of its own, so the stacking risk here is the total FODMAP load of the meal rather than lemon adding to one particular group. A lemony sauce over a dish that already leans on higher FODMAP ingredients is the combination that tips a meal, not the lemon by itself.
• Juicing concentrates it A glass of lemon drink packs the juice of several fruits into one serving and leaves the fibre behind, so a tall lemonade runs well past the Small serving that everyday cooking uses. The wedge on the side of a plate and a poured glass are not the same amount of fruit.
• Drying concentrates it too Dried lemon peel and dried lemon slices have had their water removed, so everything left behind is packed into a much smaller volume. A spoonful of dried peel is not equivalent to the same spoonful of fresh zest.
• The dressing is the real hazard Bottled lemon vinaigrettes, marinades, lemon and herb seasoning blends and lemon sauces in restaurants are routinely built on onion and garlic. The lemon on the label is low, and the onion powder halfway down the ingredient list is not.

What else works

Lemon has plenty of company among low fruits that fill the same brightening role: lime works almost interchangeably in dressings and drinks, and orange and mandarin give a sweeter citrus lift. A splash of vinegar does the same acid job in a dressing. The lookalikes worth separating out are the processed forms and the sweetened ones. Bottled lemonade is often sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, so it is a different proposition from a squeeze of fruit in water. Honey and lemon drinks bring honey, which is not a low FODMAP sweetener; maple syrup, table sugar or rice malt syrup sweeten a lemon drink without that problem. Lemon curd and shop bought lemon fillings are built around other ingredients entirely, so judge those by what else is in them.

How to keep it low

Pick fruit that feels heavy for its size with thin, taut skin, since those yield the most juice for the least fruit. Zest before you juice, because zesting a squeezed half is a miserable job, and the zest carries a lot of the flavour for very little fruit. Juice a batch and freeze it in an ice cube tray so a single cube gives you the splash a recipe wants without a whole fruit sitting open in the fridge. Whole lemons keep for weeks in the crisper drawer and dry out fast on the counter. When you are cooking, reach for garlic-infused oil, chives and the green tops of spring onions to build the rest of the dressing around the lemon, and when you are ordering out, ask for lemon wedges on the side instead of the kitchen's lemon sauce, which is where the onion and garlic usually hide.

Common questions

is lemon low fodmap

Yes. Lemon is rated low overall, an estimate drawn from its composition rather than a measured serving, and the tested pattern has a Small serving at low. A Large serving reads moderate, so the rating is low at the amounts lemon normally gets used in.

how much lemon can i eat

A Small serving stays low, while a Large serving climbs to moderate. Splashes, wedges and zest sit comfortably in the low range; a dish or drink built around a lot of lemon is the one to keep an eye on.

can i have lemon during the elimination phase

Lemon is a low food at its tested serving, so it is generally used freely as a flavouring during the strict phase. Tolerance is individual, and reintroduction of anything higher is done with a dietitian.

is lemon juice or lemonade the same as fresh lemon

Not really. A glass of lemonade concentrates the juice of several fruits and usually adds a sweetener, often high fructose corn syrup, so it runs higher than the squeeze of fresh juice a recipe calls for.