Lychee

Why lychee is rated low

Lychee is a portion story more than anything else. At about 9 medium (95g) it is low, a good bowl of peeled fruit. Larger portions are moderate and much larger portions are high, as the excess fructose in the fruit builds. Nothing about the fruit changes between those amounts, only the quantity. That makes lychee low at a real, usable serving and dependent on stopping there, because lychees are peeled and eaten one after another without much thought.

What changes your risk

• Serving size About 9 medium (95g) is low, larger portions are moderate and much larger portions are high. A generous bowl is fine, but a bag eaten in one sitting goes well past the low serve.
• Counting before you start Lychees are peeled one at a time while you talk, which is the easiest way in the world to lose track. Counting out 9 medium (95g) before the first one is opened is more reliable than counting shells afterwards.
• Stacking across the meal Excess fructose adds up across a sitting. A serving of lychee after a fruit salad with mango or apple, a fruit juice and a honey dessert is a stack of excess fructose arriving together even though each one was low on its own.
• Canned lychee in syrup Canned lychee is a separate product from fresh. FODMAPs are water soluble, so some can move out of the fruit into the canning liquid, but with fruit in syrup that liquid usually gets eaten or drunk rather than poured away, so it is not a way of lowering anything.
• Dried lychee and lychee drinks Drying removes water and concentrates what is left, so the same load arrives in far less fruit. Lychee syrups, cordials and bubble tea flavourings are a different product again and none of them carry the fresh serving figure.

What else works

If about 9 medium (95g) is not enough fruit for the occasion, the sensible move is to fill out the bowl with something else that is low rather than climbing lychee's own ladder: strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, oranges, mandarins and pineapple each sit low at a normal serve. The close cousins that get sold alongside lychee, longan and rambutan, are separate fruits, so they cannot be treated as a substitute with the same numbers. Steer clear of rounding out a tropical bowl with mango or cherries, and treat canned lychee in syrup, dried lychee and lychee flavoured drinks as separate foods rather than as more of the same.

How to keep it low

Buy lychees still on the branch where you can, keep them in the fridge in a paper bag, and peel to order, since the shell is what stops them turning to mush. Count about 9 medium (95g) into a bowl and put the rest away before you sit down, because grazing from a pile makes the amount vanish. If you are serving them to a table, portion into individual bowls rather than one shared mound. Eating out, lychee turns up swimming in dessert syrup, in bubble tea and in cocktails, where the portion is set by the kitchen and the syrup comes with it, so a fresh fruit you count yourself is much easier to keep at the low serve.

Common questions

how much lychee is low fodmap

About 9 medium (95g) is the low serving. It moves to moderate at larger portions and to high at much larger portions, so the amount really is what decides it.

how many lychees is too many

Past the low serving of about 9 medium (95g), larger portions are moderate and much larger portions are high, so counting them out matters.

is canned lychee low fodmap

Canned lychee is a separate product, so the fresh figure of 9 medium (95g) does not transfer to it. The syrup it sits in is part of what you eat, so it is not comparable to draining and rinsing a canned vegetable.

can i eat lychee on the elimination phase

Yes, at about 9 medium (95g) lychee is low FODMAP and fits in the elimination phase. Keeping to that counted serving is the part that matters, since larger amounts are moderate and then high.