What is actually in durian
Durian is the one tropical fruit that does not behave like a fruit on a composition table. Here are the numbers, and what is unusual about them.
Per 100 g of flesh
Reference values for raw durian from the United States Department of Agriculture's food composition database. They describe the fruit in general, not any one variety or lot.
| Per 100 g | Amount |
|---|---|
| Water | 65 g |
| Energy | 147 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 27.1 g, of which fibre 3.8 g |
| Protein | 1.5 g |
| Fat | 5.3 g |
| Potassium | 436 mg |
| Vitamin C | 19.7 mg |
| Thiamine (B1) | 0.374 mg |
| Vitamin B6 | 0.316 mg |
| Copper | 0.207 mg |
| Magnesium | 30 mg |
| Manganese | 0.325 mg |
| Folate | 36 µg |
Source: USDA FoodData Central, durian, raw or frozen.
Three numbers that are not like other fruit
147 kcal
Most fresh tropical fruit sits between 30 and 70 kcal per 100 g. Mango is around 60, papaya around 43, young coconut water 19. Durian is roughly two to three times that, and the reason is the next line on the table.
5.3 g fat
Fruit is not usually a source of fat. Banana has about 0.3 g per 100 g, mango about 0.4 g. Durian has more than ten times that. Together with the 27 g of carbohydrate, that is where the energy comes from — and it is also why the flesh has the texture it does. What people describe as custard-like is not a metaphor about sweetness; it is a description of a fruit with a fat content closer to an avocado than to a mango.
0.374 mg thiamine
Thiamine is vitamin B1. Durian carries an unusual amount of it for a fruit — the USDA table puts 100 g at about 31% of the daily reference intake used on United States labels. Most fruit contributes almost none.
What we are not going to tell you
Durian attracts more health claims than any fruit we handle — about heat, about blood pressure, about what may or may not be eaten alongside it. Some of those claims have research behind them and some do not, and either way a fruit exporter is not the right source. Ask a doctor or a dietitian.
What we can be useful about is the table above, and the fact that the numbers in it move.
Why the numbers move
Variety
Reference tables describe "durian", not a cultivar. Ri6, Monthong and Musang King are different plants with different flesh, and they do not give identical readings. What we ship is Ri6.
Ripeness at harvest
Starch converts to sugar as the fruit ripens, so the carbohydrate figure is a moving target between the day a fruit is cut and the day it is opened. Durian for export is cut before it falls, which is a different ripeness profile from fruit sold at a roadside stand an hour from the grove.
Fresh or frozen
Freezing whole fruit or pulp at −18 °C holds composition far better than it holds texture. For a buyer building a label, the practical consequence is that fresh and frozen are not automatically interchangeable on a nutrition panel — they need their own analysis.
For anyone building a label. Reference values are a starting point, not a compliant nutrition panel. A US or EU panel describes the product as sold, which for durian means the variety, the format and the lot. We supply the analysis for what we ship.