Cranberries & Carbs
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Depends on whether you’re talking about fresh or dried cranberries.
Fresh Cranberries
If we look at a serving (1 cup) of raw cranberries you’ll see that it has the following amounts of carbohydrate in it:
Overall Carbs: 12 grams
From Sugar: 4 grams
From Fiber: 5 grams
5 g of that 12 g carbohydrate total is fiber which doesn’t count because fiber doesn’t get absorbed by the body, it just goes through the G.I. system and makes its way out.
So that means that a serving of fresh, raw cranberries yields about 7 g net of carbohydrate. I would say that that amount puts cranberries into the “low carb fruit” category along with many of the other berries that we all enjoy that have about the same amount.
Fruits like mangoes, bananas and grapes have approximately 28 g per serving putting them on the high-end.
Dried Cranberries
If we look at a serving (1 cup) of dried cranberries you’ll see that it has the following amounts of carbohydrate in it:
Overall Carbs: 132 grams
From Sugar: 116 grams
From Fiber: 12 grams
So yeah, dried cranberries are pretty much candy. Case closed.
Dried cranberries are the ones that people eat most often because they taste good. Raw cranberries are incredibly sour so they are generally used in recipes where other ingredients help buffer the acidity.
The reason dried cranberries taste good is because the company that makes them adds lots of sugar, otherwise people wouldn’t really be interested.
High Nutrient Cranberries
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So the answer to the question of whether or not cranberries are high in carbohydrate is it depends on which version of cranberry you’re talking about.
Dried cranberries yes.
Raw cranberries no.
So if you want to incorporate more raw cranberries into your diet to reap the nutritional benefits that they offer, then I suggest checking out the post on drinking raw cranberry juice and the post on cranberry smoothies with little to no sugar added.
That way you can have your cake and eat it too.
Hope this helps.
– Cranby
