Per Calorie, Ash Gourd Beats Baobab on Fibre

Short answer: Ranked per calorie instead of per 100 g, the leaders swap. Ash gourd gives 0.22 g of fibre per calorie, beating baobab (0.20) and carob (0.18) — the two fruits that top the absolute fibre table. On vitamin C, camu-camu delivers exactly 100 mg per calorie, ahead of kakadu plum (51) despite kakadu plum holding the higher absolute figure. The pattern is that watery fruits win per-calorie rankings and concentrated dried ones win absolute rankings, which means the two questions have different answers.

	🟢 Ash gourd	🥥 Baobab	🟤 Carob	🥒 Bitter melon	🍒 Camu camu	🍈 Kakadu plum	🍒 Acerola	💗 Raspberry
Taste	Very mild and faintly sweet with a soft, translucent, watery flesh when cooked; almost flavorless raw, it absorbs broths and syrups, becoming silky in soup or candied into chewy-crisp sweets.	Tangy citrus-sherbet — pear, grapefruit, and cream-of-tartar fizz in a powder that melts chalky-then-bright on the tongue.	Sweet, malty, and mild with toffee and cocoa notes when roasted and ground; the raw ripe pod is chewy and honey-sweet, while carob powder tastes like a gentle, fruitier cocoa.	Intensely, distinctively bitter — the whole point of the fruit — with a crisp, cucumber-like flesh; salting, blanching, and cooking mellow it, and its bitterness is prized as an appetite-sharpening, cooling quality.	Mouth-gripping sour — rhubarb, sour cherry, and lime peel with a floral Amazon-guava undertone. Sugar or blending is not optional.	Tart, green, and astringent — stewed apple and English gooseberry with a piney, herbal edge. More medicine-bright than dessert-sweet; usually met as powder or purée.	Juicy and tart with a mild sweetness and a slight apple note; softer and more acidic than a true cherry. Ripe fruit is delicate and refreshing, best eaten or juiced immediately.	Intensely aromatic — floral, winey, sweet-tart — with a delicate, collapsing texture and gentle seed crunch. Black raspberries are deeper and jammier; golden ones milder and honeyed.
Type	Melon	Tropical & subtropical	Tropical & subtropical	Melon	Berry	Stone fruit	Berry	Berry
Peak season	Autumn, Winter	Winter, Spring	Autumn	Summer	Summer	Autumn, Winter	Summer, Autumn	Summer, Autumn
Origin	South and Southeast Asia	Savannas of sub-Saharan Africa	The eastern Mediterranean and Middle East	South Asia and tropical Africa; spread across Asia and the Caribbean	Floodplains of the Peruvian and Brazilian Amazon	Northern Australia (Kakadu, Arnhem Land, the Kimberley)	Southern Mexico, Central America, and northern South America	Temperate Eurasia (the species name honors Mount Ida); black raspberries are North American
Calories (per 100 g)	13	230	220	17	24	59	32	52
Sugar (per 100 g)	1.5 g	26 g	38 g	1 g	1.3 g	4 g	4 g	4.4 g
Vitamin C (per 100 g)	13 mg	170 mg	—	84 mg	2400 mg	3000 mg	1677 mg	26.2 mg
Fiber (per 100 g)	2.9 g	45 g	40 g	2.8 g	1.1 g	7 g	1.1 g	6.5 g
Potassium (per 100 g)	—	—	830 mg	—	—	—	146 mg	151 mg
Typical price	Budget	Mid	Budget	Budget	Premium	Luxury	Mid	Premium

Nearly every “highest in X” fruit ranking measures per 100 g. That is the convention, and it has a quiet bias built into it: it rewards removing water.

Dry a fruit and everything left behind concentrates — sugar, fibre, minerals, the lot. So absolute tables fill up with dried and powdered products, and fresh fruit looks unimpressive by comparison. Ask a different question — how much of this do I get for the calories I spend? — and the leaderboard rearranges.

We ran that on the 366 fruits in this collection that carry a sourced nutritional analysis. The table above shows their real figures; the ratios below are computed from them.

Fibre per calorie: a watery gourd wins

Fruit	Fibre	Calories	Fibre per calorie
Ash gourd	2.9 g	13	0.22 g
Baobab	45 g	230	0.20 g
Carob	40 g	220	0.18 g
Citron	5 g	30	0.17 g
Bitter melon	2.8 g	17	0.17 g
Raspberry	6.5 g	52	0.13 g

Ash gourd holds only 2.9 g of fibre per 100 g — a fifteenth of baobab. But it is the lightest fruit in the entire collection at 13 kcal, and that denominator is small enough to put it top.

Note what fills the rest of the list: bitter melon at 17 kcal, citron at 30. Per calorie, fibre rankings become a list of watery fruits. The two absolute champions survive only because their fibre content is extraordinary enough to carry their energy density with it.

Vitamin C per calorie: camu-camu doubles the record holder

Fruit	Vitamin C	Calories	Vit C per calorie
Camu-camu	2400 mg	24	100 mg
Acerola	1677 mg	32	52 mg
Kakadu plum	3000 mg	59	51 mg
Rosehip	1000 mg	110	9 mg
Amla	300 mg	44	7 mg

This one produces a clean reversal. Kakadu plum has the highest absolute vitamin C of any fruit we hold — around 3000 mg per 100 g, roughly sixty times an orange. But it carries 59 kcal, while camu-camu delivers 2400 mg on just 24. Per calorie, camu-camu is close to double.

The round number is a coincidence worth stating plainly: camu-camu works out at almost exactly 100 mg of vitamin C per calorie. An adult’s daily requirement, several times over, for the energy in a third of an almond.

Which ranking should you actually use?

Both, for different questions.

Per calorie is the right measure if energy intake is the constraint — it tells you what you get for what you spend. Absolute content is the right measure if you want a meaningful dose, because you would need something like fifteen times the weight of ash gourd to match the fibre in a spoonful of baobab powder.

The honest summary is that “highest in fibre” is an incomplete question, and most published rankings never say which version they are answering.

Want to apply this yourself? The fruit finder filters all 366 by real sugar and fibre bands and by where they grow. For the conventional absolute rankings, see highest-fibre fruits and highest vitamin C fruits.

Figures are per 100 g of edible portion and vary with variety, ripeness and growing conditions. Kakadu plum in particular is reported anywhere from about 1000 to over 5000 mg, so treat it as a band. This is general information, not medical or dietary advice.

Frequently asked questions

Which fruit has the most fibre per calorie?

Ash gourd, at roughly 0.22 g of fibre per calorie — 2.9 g of fibre in a fruit of only 13 kcal per 100 g. Baobab follows at 0.20 and carob at 0.18. Those two hold far higher absolute fibre (45 g and 40 g per 100 g against ash gourd's 2.9 g), but they are also energy-dense dried products, so per calorie they fall behind a gourd that is mostly water.

Which fruit has the most vitamin C per calorie?

Camu-camu, at almost exactly 100 mg per calorie — 2400 mg of vitamin C in a fruit of 24 kcal per 100 g. Acerola follows at 52 and kakadu plum at 51. Kakadu plum has the highest absolute vitamin C of any fruit we hold at around 3000 mg per 100 g, but it also carries 59 kcal, so per calorie camu-camu is roughly double.

Why does ranking per calorie change the answer?

Because absolute rankings per 100 g quietly reward removing water. Drying a fruit concentrates everything in it, including the nutrient being measured, so dried and powdered products dominate absolute tables. Dividing by calories asks a different and often more useful question — how much of this nutrient do I get for the energy I spend — and that favours fruits that are mostly water. Neither ranking is wrong; they answer different questions.

Does this mean I should eat ash gourd instead of baobab?

Not necessarily, and this is where per-calorie rankings can mislead in the other direction. You would need about 15 times the weight of ash gourd to match the fibre in a spoonful of baobab powder. Per calorie is the better measure if you are managing energy intake; absolute content is the better measure if you want a meaningful dose of a nutrient without eating a kilo of anything. This is general information, not dietary advice.