Dinner
Thai Peanut Chicken Rice Bowl
30 minMedium
Lime
Fruits · Citrus
TLDRLast updated 4 September 2026
Half a lime, 30 g, is rated green, and all six groups on the panel come back at zero. The fruit is worth pulling apart, though, because it gives you two separate flavours that live in different places. The perfume sits in the coloured outer skin as an oil. The sourness sits in the flesh as an acid. Neither one is a carbohydrate, so you can grate and squeeze as freely as a recipe asks.
Last updated 4 September 2026Serving sizes for lime
Half a lime (30 g) is the tested serve, rated green. In practice you use a wedge, a squeeze or a teaspoon of zest.
0.5 limesabout 30 g
Tested serving sizes
| Serving | Amount | Main FODMAP | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1/2 lime | 30 g | None detected |
Breakdown for 0.5 limes
0gFructose
0gLactose
0gFructans
0gGOS
0gSorbitol
0gMannitol
0.5 limesabout 30 g
Is lime low FODMAP?
There is nothing here to ferment. At the tested half fruit the reading is zero across the board: no fructans, no excess fructose, no lactose, no GOS, no sorbitol, no mannitol. A lime is water, citric acid, a little sugar and a load of fragrant oil held in glands you can see as dimples in the skin, and none of that is a fermentable carbohydrate. It also explains why zest and juice behave identically on this diet while tasting nothing alike. The juice holds a separate entry with its own measured pour.
Lime and IBS: what to know
Half a lime is far more lime than any recipe asks for, which is the comfortable part of this page. A wedge over a taco, a teaspoon of zest in a marinade or a slice dropped into a glass are all fractions of the amount that was measured, so the fruit itself is seldom what needs checking. The form it arrives in is another matter. Cordial and sweetened lime juice are syrups with flavour stirred through them, lime pickle is a different food entirely, and key lime pie carries its own amber rating for reasons that sit in the filling rather than the fruit.
Gut-friendly ways to eat lime
Zest before you juice, because a squeezed shell is impossible to grate. The oil sits in the outer green layer only, so keep the pressure light on a fine grater and stop the moment you see white. Zest goes into rice as it steams, into a coconut milk curry off the heat, into cake batter, and into salt as a rub for fish or chicken. Wedges belong on the table rather than in the pan. For the same perfume without any sharpness, kaffir lime leaves do the job in a broth, and a strip of peel in a jug of water flavours it without sweetening it.
Recipes with lime
Frequently asked questions
Is lime zest low FODMAP?
Yes. The zest is the outer skin of a fruit that measured zero across every FODMAP group at half a lime, and what you take off with a grater is a teaspoon or two at most. It is also the part carrying the aromatic oil, which is why a dish zested and then juiced tastes far more of lime than one that was only juiced. Avoid the pith underneath, which is bitter rather than fermentable.
How much lime can I use in a day?
There is one measured point, half a lime at 30 g, and it came back empty on all six groups. Nothing above that has been tested, so a large quantity is unmeasured rather than known to be safe, but the practical ceiling is taste: a dish turns unpleasantly sour long before you approach the flesh of half a fruit. Wedges, squeezes and zest all sit comfortably inside what was measured.
Is lime cordial or lime pickle low FODMAP?
Neither is covered by the figures here, and both are worth reading the label on. Cordial is mostly sugar syrup, and which sugar it uses decides everything, since fruit juice concentrates and high fructose syrups behave very differently from cane sugar. Lime pickle is oil, salt, spices and whole fruit, and the recipe often includes garlic. The plain fruit is the version this rating describes.
Do limes count towards my daily fruit limit?
Not in any meaningful way. Spacing fruit through the day is sound practice on this diet because fruit serves stack up, but a squeeze of lime is not a serve of fruit and it brings no FODMAPs to stack. Nobody sits down to half a lime. Use it to make an otherwise dull plate taste of something, and count the orange or the handful of berries instead.
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