How Many Carbs In A Banana?
Updated 01.12.2011
In this short post I will answer the question on how many carbs in a banana.
Bananas are tasty, nutritious and healthy. Also they’re quite practical, as they come in their own “wrapper”.
If you’re on a calorie restricted diet, you might want to know about how many calories in a banana.
When on a low carbohydrate diet on the other hand, you definitely want the answer to the question:
How many carbs in a banana?
Short answer:
See below for the longer, more detailed answer.
If you’re looking for a good diet program, this one here comes highly recommended.
I should take the time to watch the video: it’s worth it! 
How Many Carbs in a Banana?
Carbohydrates in a banana can be important, for carb restricted diet plans or when you need to replace sugars in your muscles and liver glycogen stores after a gruelling workout or maybe a football game.
If you’re an athlete, you will be familiar with the concept of a post workout shake.
A good post workout or post game shake should contain an average of about 40-50 carbs, and it can be nice to replace some of them with a banana sometimes.
What if you don’t have any protein powder, or want to use all natural ingredients?
Say you don’t have a protein formula or mass gainer powder at hand, and you want to whip up a quick shake from all natural ingredients? This is what I recommend to my athletes:
A natural Post Workout Shake with a Banana and Greek Yogurt
Here is a simple recipe for a carbohydrate rich, high protein, purely natural and healthy post workout shake including a banana:
|
Throw it all in a blender, add water to thin out where preferred. Total carbs in this shake are 49 gram, 23 gram from the banana, 20 gram from the fruit juice and 6 gram the greek yogurt. Protein is about 26 gram, from the Greek yogurt. |
One great source of information about carbohydrates in different foods is carbohydrate-counter.org. I find this one the best and most comprehensive.
How many carbs in a banana, the details
Then there is the question are bananas good for you at all? My good colleague Kris answers this question very well in his awesome Health Blog, kriskris.com.
Another quick tip for athletes:
Especially football players tend to eat bananas before games or during half-time. This is something I must strongly recommend against, because it can result in hypoglycemia (low blood sugar).
Bananas are classed as a medium G.I. fruit, but as far as athletes are concerned, we consider everything above 50 on the Glycemic Index as high, since it can get you in trouble.
So bananas are a post (meaning “after”) workout or post game fruit only.
It has happened quite a few times that players suddenly got dizzy, weak, breaking out in a cold sweat and got extremely agitated and aggressive without any apparent reason. These are the symptoms of low blood sugar levels, and this can happen to you if you eat bananas before or during long, strenuous activities, such as a soccer game.
What should you do?
Sit down immediately and have at least 10-20 gram L-Glutamine, and maybe an apple. You should be fine within 10-15 minutes.
If you want fruit for energy before a game or training, try an apple or an orange instead.
For more info on Carb Loading for a Match, you can check out this post here.
All this doesn’t mean that bananas are bad for you, they are quite healthy at the right times, and contain quite a lot of beneficial micro nutrients, as covered in this post: how much potassium in a banana.
Mark
P.S.
This is post #100, Yaaay! I hope you enjoyed it, and thanks for being one of my Readers! 
Mark
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12 Comments
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Mark what would you then recommend having during halftime of a game?
Hey Ingó!
Yeah an apple or an orange work well, they’re low G.I.
That’s if you want fruit. Some more good examples would be all kinds of berries, papaya, avocado, grapefruit, apricot, cherries.
Otherwise just have some Glutamine in water, that is probably the best thing anyways.
That, and or BCAA’s (10-20 gram)
Mark
Congrats Mark on the 100 post !
Keep up the very good work you’re doing here.
I´m always reading !
Hey Emil!
Thanks Dude, I really appreciate that you know?
Mark
Wow, I didn’t know that eating banana before soccer game or any strenuous activity can make someone feeling dizzy. I hope my friend (a soccer player) already knew about this. Thank you for sharing!
Yeah it can, and has happened many times before!
Only then the player might not make the connection, and possibly make the same mistake again!
Mark
I definitely agree with this. I’ve had both bananas and apples before grueling workouts (just the gym, not an athlete) and I found the apples to give me much more sustainable energy.
Definitely! Apples are great, so are oranges.
Mark
Congrats on the 100 posts! Nutritiondata.com is a great online resource for finding all sorts of nutritional information on any food item.
Hey Srdjan!
Thanks man!
Mark
Mark,
I lift weights along with cardio full time. I just more or less learned free weights and still in the process learning more about them.
I am curious to know if I am done working out, take a whey isolate with maybe 2 or 3g of carbs and then take a normal size banana, is that OK or should I use something else? I’ve been thinking about a carb supp but afraid it will make me gain a lot of weight.
Hey Will,
yeah normally that’s just fine, maybe better than a carbohydrate supplement, I’d be a little careful with all those “weight gainers” out there, because you sure gain weight… only that’s fat weight!
But it really depends on your training goal: if it’s burning fat, I’d skip the carbs totally after lifting, I wouldn’t even bother with the whey necessarily… But if you’re building up, the whey and a banana sound about right!
Mark