High-satiety fruits and berries – the best and the worst

Are fruits and berries effective for weight loss and metabolic health?

Ask a plant-based fan, and they'll say it's great. Ask a low-carb/keto/carnivore person, and they'll say the exact opposite.

Who's right?

Perhaps none of them. Looking mostly at whether something comes from animals or mostly at the carbs can sometimes miss the full picture. With the Hava satiety scoring, we try to simplify without missing key factors. We combine protein percent, energy density, fiber, and hedonic factors into one scale, 0-100.

We find something interesting in fruits and berries. While they do contain some carbs (and very little protein), they are also very low in energy density, high in fiber, and hardly hedonic.

As a result, most of them end up somewhere in the center, with balanced satiety, in the 40-60 range.

Overview

Note: if the image above is hard to read on a mobile screen, try turning it sideways. You can also pinch to zoom (using two fingers).

High and low scoring fruits

One common fruit that scores low is grapes, with a low 21 score. It has much less fiber and a bit more sugar than other fruits.

As you might have guessed, dried fruits score lower, as they are more concentrated and faster to consume. For example, dry grapes and you get raisins that score 14.

Another way to lower the score is to remove all the fiber and by juicing. While an orange scores a respectable 54, orange juice only scores 23.

Reasonable choices at a balanced satiety level include common fruits like apples (46) and pears (47), with oranges (54) being perhaps the highest-scoring commonly eaten fruit.

Berries

Berries score slightly higher than most fruit, especially raspberries (57), strawberries (63), and blackberries (66).

Foods with berries

There are many foods with berries in them, many of them scoring quite low. Examples include blueberry muffins (0) and strawberry ice cream (19).

A bit higher scores can be had from acai bowls (38), oatmeal with blueberries (39), or berry yogurts (about 41).

For a real superstar satiety score, try berries in non-fat Greek yogurt (78). Anything with non-fat Greek yogurt is a satiety cheat code, as it is super nutritious and high in protein with very few calories.

More

Check the satiety of any food – and learn how it's calculated: Satiety calculator

To try our Hava satiety app for even more support, get your free trial here.