Durian Calories: Per 100g, Per Seed and Per Whole Fruit

Durian gets called fattening, sugary and dangerous in roughly equal measure. Two of those are overstated and one is understated. Here are the numbers.

Durian nutrition per 100g of flesh

These are the United States Department of Agriculture’s figures for “Durian, raw or frozen”, entry 168192 in FoodData Central. They describe durian in general, not any one clone. Sugar content in particular moves with variety and ripeness, so treat the carbohydrate line as a reliable average rather than a reading of the fruit in front of you.

Set against jackfruit on the same USDA figures, durian carries about half as many calories again and roughly eight times the fat. Our jackfruit vs durian guide compares the two fruits side by side.

Per seed, Mount Alvernia Hospital puts one small seed, about 40g to 50g of seed and flesh, at about 56 kcal, and a large seed of about 80g at about 113 kcal (Mount Alvernia). Seed size varies a great deal with the variety and the fruit, so weigh the flesh if the number matters. One recent review puts edible flesh at 15 to 30 per cent of whole-fruit weight (Frontiers in Nutrition, 2026), so a whole 1kg fruit carries only about 150g to 300g of flesh, or roughly 220 to 440 kcal. The calories in a fruit are not the calories in a kilogram of fruit.

The fat is real, and it is unusual

Most fruit contains almost no fat. Durian contains around 5g per 100g, which is why the texture is custard-like rather than juicy, and why it is more filling than its size suggests. That fat is the reason durian sits in the stomach the way an avocado does and a mango does not.

This is the honest part of the “durian is fattening” claim. At 147 kcal per 100g it is not extreme, but it is easy to eat 300g without noticing, and 300g is around 440 kcal.

The glycaemic index is lower than almost everyone assumes

This is the part that gets repeated wrongly. Durian’s glycaemic index has been measured at 49 plus or minus 5, which falls in the low band. In the same study, watermelon measured about 55, papaya about 58 and pineapple about 82. Durian, watermelon and papaya were not significantly different from each other; only pineapple was significantly higher. The study was small, with ten healthy volunteers (Robert and colleagues, 2008).

So among the fruits tested, durian did not raise blood sugar faster than watermelon or papaya. It is sweeter tasting and more calorie dense, which is a different problem.

For diabetes: the caution is portion size and total carbohydrate, not the glycaemic index. 100g of durian flesh carries about 27g of carbohydrate, roughly the same as 100g of cooked white rice. Durian can fit into a meal plan, but it has to be counted rather than treated as a free fruit. Talk to your doctor or dietitian about your own numbers rather than relying on a durian website.

The genuine risk is potassium, and it is specific

Durian carries 436mg of potassium per 100g, more than a banana at 358mg. Both are USDA figures.

For anyone with working kidneys this is not a concern. Kidneys excrete surplus potassium without difficulty, and for most people potassium-rich food is part of a healthy diet.

For people with kidney disease it is a real danger, not a caution. Impaired kidneys cannot clear the load, potassium accumulates in the blood, and severe hyperkalaemia disturbs heart rhythm. There are documented case reports: a 2009 case from Hospital Sultanah Aminah in Johor Bahru described a 48-year-old woman with end-stage kidney failure on haemodialysis who had eaten durian the day before and arrived with dangerously high blood potassium. She had a cardiopulmonary arrest, was revived and recovered (Leo and colleagues, 2011). A 2021 case report documented life-threatening hyperkalaemia in an elderly woman whose acute kidney injury followed gastroenteritis, after she ate a large amount of durian; she also recovered (Payus and colleagues, 2021).

If you are on dialysis or on a potassium-restricted diet, durian is not a moderation question. Ask your nephrologist or renal dietitian.

What about “heatiness”?

In Traditional Chinese Medicine durian is classified as heaty, and the folk advice is to drink water poured into the empty husk afterwards.

The biomedical evidence is thin, and thinner than it is usually reported. The study everyone points to is Chua, Nurhaslina and Gan, Hyperthermic effects of Durio zibethinus and its interaction with paracetamol, published in Methods and Findings in Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology in 2008. It gave durian to rats and measured their temperature at one, two and five hours afterwards.

The part almost everyone leaves out is the result. The authors reported that durian raised the temperature of some rats, but not significantly against the control. Rats given durian with paracetamol showed a significant drop in temperature. So the study is not evidence that durian heats you up. It is a study that looked and did not find a reliable effect.

You will often see a precise temperature rise quoted from this paper. The published abstract gives no such figure.

The wider symptom cluster attributed to heatiness, sore throats and rashes and the rest, has no established biomedical mechanism. Heatiness remains a widely held belief and a useful cultural shorthand for “this is rich food, do not eat a kilogram of it”.

The short version

Durian is calorie dense, unusually fatty for a fruit, low on the glycaemic index, and very high in potassium. Healthy adults can eat it in sensible portions. People with kidney disease should treat it as genuinely off limits without medical advice. People with diabetes should count it as carbohydrate rather than as fruit.

For how much of it is sensible and who should be careful, see how much durian is too much. For the pairings people warn about, most of which do not hold up, see what not to eat with durian. On the one warning with a real published mechanism behind it, see durian and alcohol, where the evidence is more interesting and much weaker than the warnings suggest.

For what to buy and how to pick it, see our guide to choosing durian and the variety reference.