Lychee

Food · Fruit · Tropical

Connected to · 1

food source · 1

Vitamin C
Lychee has a simple nutrient profile: almost nothing but sugar, water and vitamin C. It has about 71.5 mg of vitamin C per 100 g, a little more than orange, and that is its clear strength.
Mechanism · 2
Mechanism · No gel to slow the sugar
Lychee has very little fiber, so there is no gel to slow its sugar on the way into the blood. Vitamin C is its clear strength; claims that lychee polyphenols slow aging come mostly from test-tube experiments, and a strong effect in a test tube does not mean a benefit in the body.
Numbers · How much to eat at once
Lychee has about 71.5 mg of vitamin C per 100 g, a little more than orange (about 53 mg), with about 1.3 g of fiber, 0.8 g of protein and 0.4 g of fat. A usual sitting is 5–10 fruits (about 80–150 g), so the total sugar is not extreme. Dried lychee concentrates the sugar about 4–5 times, so portions have to be counted by dried weight.

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What lychee is and which part you eat

EVIDENCEGUIDE 1

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Lychee contains two toxins that shut down the body's backup line for making its own sugar, and unripe fruit holds more of them. Eaten after a meal, when food is holding blood sugar up, it rarely causes trouble. But when a hungry child, especially an undernourished one, eats a lot of lychees toward evening, blood sugar can fall overnight until the brain runs short, bringing seizures or even coma. So do not let children eat lots of lychees on an empty stomach, and if a child vomits, becomes unusually drowsy, or has a seizure after eating lychees, take them to the emergency department immediately.

How this metabolic chain breaks, link by link, is laid out in full in the chapter on how lychee illness happens. For now, three words are enough: ripe, fed, few — eat ripe fruit, eat it after a meal, and do not eat it by the pound.

Apart from that, lychee is a very simple fruit. The white flesh we eat is not the peel but a layer of flesh that grows around the seed (an aril); it holds almost nothing but sugar, water, and vitamin C, with no protein or fat.

A partly peeled lychee and a longitudinal half, with rough red shell, white flesh and one large brown seed. — A CLOSER LOOK
Red shell, white aril and one large seed
The edible white part is an aril around the seed. The cut separates outer shell, white flesh and seed.

Educational content, not medical advice — consult a clinician.

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