Rhubarb
Fruits · Other Fruits
Half a cup of chopped rhubarb, about 65 g, is rated green, which catches people out because rhubarb tastes far too sharp to be innocent. The stalk is not the problem. Rhubarb almost always arrives cooked down with a great deal of sugar, often with apple in the pot and a wheat crumble over the top, and that is where the FODMAPs in a bowl of rhubarb come from.
Last updated 4 September 2026Serving sizes for rhubarb
Half a cup of chopped stalks, about 65 g, is rated green. It is the only tested serve.
Tested serving sizes
| Serving | Amount | Main FODMAP | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1/2 cup chopped | 65 g | Fructans 0.03 g |
Breakdown for 0.5 cups
Is rhubarb low FODMAP?
The tested half cup holds 0.03 g of fructans and nothing else whatsoever: no excess fructose, no polyols, no lactose, no GOS. What happens next in the pan matters more than the stalks do. Plain white sugar is sucrose, not a FODMAP, so sweetening rhubarb on the stove does not change its rating, while honey very much does at 2 g of excess fructose in a single teaspoon. Apple is the other thing cooks reach for to soften the tartness, and it brings excess fructose and sorbitol in with it.
Rhubarb and IBS: what to know
Measure rhubarb raw, before it goes near heat, because stewing collapses it. A cup of stewed rhubarb stands for a good deal more than a cup of chopped stalks, and it is the raw half cup that was tested. That single measurement is also the whole of what is known here, so a large bowl is uncharted rather than cleared. Rhubarb is stringy stuff as well, and while fibre is not a FODMAP, a big serve of anything this fibrous can sit heavily if roughage is already something you notice.
Gut-friendly ways to eat rhubarb
Stew the half cup with a splash of water and plain sugar and you have a green-rated compote for Greek yoghurt or porridge. A crumble topping built on oats, rated green at half a cup dry, does the job that wheat flour usually does. Strawberries are the classic partner and hold a green rating at ten medium berries, so a strawberry and rhubarb compote keeps both halves on measured ground. Shop-bought rhubarb jam and tinned pie filling are sugar-led, untested here, and best treated as unknowns.
Frequently asked questions
Is rhubarb crumble low FODMAP?
Not as it is usually made. The fruit underneath is fine at a half cup, but the topping is wheat flour, apple often goes in to bulk out the filling, and the helping is rarely small. Rebuilt with an oat topping, plain sugar and no apple, a crumble can sit inside measured ground. The portion still counts: a soup bowl of it is several tested serves of rhubarb.
How much rhubarb can I eat with IBS?
Half a cup chopped, about 65 g, is the tested and rated portion, and it is measured raw. Nothing above that has been checked, so a large bowl is an experiment you are running on yourself rather than a portion anyone has cleared. Given how little shows up at the half cup, the sugar and the pastry around it are usually the better things to adjust first.
Is stewed rhubarb still low FODMAP?
Stewing neither adds FODMAPs nor removes them, since fructans are heat-stable and rhubarb is cooked in its own juice rather than drained. Volume is what changes. Rhubarb cooks down hard, so a half cup of raw stalks ends up as a few spoonfuls, and an ordinary-looking bowl of stewed fruit can be two or three tested serves. Measure it before it goes in the pan.
Can I use rhubarb instead of apple in a pudding?
That is the swap worth making. Apple is rated red at one medium fruit before any sugar or pastry has joined it, while the tested rhubarb serve is green, so changing the fruit removes the largest FODMAP source in most crumbles in one move. Rhubarb needs more sugar than apple to be palatable, which costs you nothing on FODMAP grounds.
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