How Many Dry Fruits Should You Eat a Day? A Portion Guide Built on ICMR-NIN Numbers

The short answer: for most healthy adults, about 35 g of nuts and seeds a day, which is a generous handful. If you also eat dried fruit such as dates, figs or raisins, think of that separately and keep it to around 30 g. The 35 g figure comes from ICMR-NIN's "My Plate for the Day". You will sometimes see 30 g credited to ICMR, but the plate itself says 35 g. The 28 g (one ounce) used in most research is a US serving size.

"Dry fruits" in Indian kitchens covers two quite different foods, and most portion advice goes wrong by treating them as one. Almonds and walnuts are mostly fat and protein. Dates and raisins are mostly sugar and fibre. They need different rules, so this guide splits them.

What the Indian guidelines say

ICMR-NIN's "My Plate for the Day" shows a full day of food for an adult. The quantities printed on it:

• Vegetables: 400 g
• Fruits: 100 g
• Pulses, eggs and flesh foods: 85 g
• Milk or curd: 300 ml
• Nuts and seeds: 35 g
• Fats and oils: 27 g

The illustration shows groundnuts, almonds, cashews and walnuts side by side, and the allowance covers seeds too. So 35 g is your whole nut-and-seed budget for the day, not 35 g of almonds on top of a bowl of pumpkin seeds on top of a trail mix.

What 35 g looks like

A handful varies enormously from hand to hand, so weigh it once on a kitchen scale and then you will know what your own handful holds. For reference, 35 g is about 29 almonds or about 50 pistachio kernels. Here is what 35 g of each nut contains, using USDA FoodData Central values:

Two things the table hides. First, nuts are not interchangeable. Walnuts carry about 9.1 g of alpha-linolenic acid (ALA, the plant omega-3) per 100 g, against 0.06 g in cashews and 0.29 g in pistachios, so about 3.2 g of ALA in a 35 g portion of walnuts. If you want omega-3 from nuts, walnuts are the ones. Second, the calorie column overstates almonds. When researchers measured what people actually absorbed from whole almonds, 35 g came to about 155 to 160 kcal, not 203. Roasted and chopped almonds give up more energy than whole raw ones, and almond butter gives up nearly all of it, so form matters.

For scale, the FSSAI label reference is a 2,000 kcal day. A 35 g portion of nuts is roughly 8 to 11% of that.

Where 28 g and 35 g come from in the research

A large meta-analysis of 20 prospective studies found that for every extra 28 g of nuts eaten per day, the risk of coronary heart disease was 29% lower (relative risk 0.71), cardiovascular disease 21% lower, total cancer 15% lower, and all-cause mortality 22% lower. Stroke did not show a clear effect. An umbrella review of 89 articles reached a similar conclusion and rated the evidence for cardiovascular outcomes as moderate quality.

Two caveats you should hold on to. These are observational studies, so people who eat nuts may also differ in other ways: income, activity, what else is on their plate. And the dose-response is not a straight line. A newer 2025 meta-analysis found the relationship between nut intake and all-cause mortality was non-linear, so there is no reason to assume that more is always better.

What about weight? In the Chennai trial of 400 overweight adults of Asian Indian origin, people eating 43 g of almonds a day for 12 weeks lost an average of 0.3 kg relative to people avoiding nuts. That is not a weight-loss method, but it is evidence that a daily portion in this range did not cause weight gain over three months.

Dried fruit is a different budget

Dates, figs and raisins have had the water taken out, so the sugar is concentrated. The NHS treats 30 g of dried fruit as one portion of fruit, roughly a heaped tablespoon of raisins or two figs, and advises eating it at mealtimes rather than grazing on it through the day, because dried fruit sticks to teeth. Here is what 30 g holds, using USDA values:

ICMR-NIN's plate lists 100 g of fruit a day and, in what we could read, does not carve out a separate line for dried fruit. A sensible reading is to count a 30 g portion of dried fruit as one of your fruit servings so that it replaces something instead of piling on top. We go deeper on this in our piece on sugar and blood sugar in dates, figs and raisins.

When to adjust the numbers

• Children. The plate is an adult reference. For kids, ask your paediatrician about amounts. And the NHS advises against whole nuts for children under five because of choking, so use ground nuts or nut butter spread thinly.
• Nut allergy. An umbrella review put allergy and related reactions at 1 to 2% of adults. If anyone at your table is allergic, none of this applies to them.
• Diabetes, kidney disease or a prescribed diet. Portions of dried fruit in particular are worth working out with your doctor or dietitian.
• Salted and flavoured nuts. The numbers above are for plain nuts. Salt, sugar coatings and extra oil change the picture.
• Weight loss. Count nuts in. A 35 g portion is a real contribution to your day's energy, and it is easy to eat three portions straight from a jar while working.

Making it practical

1. Weigh once. Weigh 35 g of your usual mix, then pour that into a small container or cupped hand and remember how it looks.
2. Mix varieties. Roughly equal parts of two or three nuts and a seed gives you walnut omega-3 plus the fibre and protein of almonds and pistachios in one go. Our Royale 7-in-1 Trail Mix and Swasth 5-in-1 Seed Mix are built around that idea.
3. Buy to your pace. At 35 g a day, one person goes through a 500 g pack in about two weeks and a 1 kg pack in about four. Oily nuts left open for a month in humid weather will turn, so size your purchase to your household. Our storage guide explains why.
4. Keep dried fruit for mealtimes. A few dates after lunch, not a bowl at the desk all afternoon.

Frequently asked questions

How many almonds should I eat in a day?

If almonds were your entire nut allowance, 35 g is about 29 almonds. In practice, most people do better with a mix, so something like 10 to 15 almonds plus some walnuts or other nuts and seeds. The popular "five to eight soaked almonds" advice is well below what the studies used, but it is a fine amount for children or for people who eat other nuts as well.

How many walnuts a day?

The plate gives no separate figure for walnuts, so treat them as part of the 35 g. Because walnuts are the main nut source of ALA, many people give them a larger share of the mix.

Does the 35 g include seeds like pumpkin and sunflower?

Yes. The plate lists "nuts and seeds" as one group.

Are roasted nuts worse than raw ones?

Not in any dramatic way. Roasting makes whole almonds slightly more energy-available (4.86 kcal/g against 4.42 for raw in one trial), which works out to about 15 extra calories in a 35 g handful. What matters more is whether oil or salt was added.

Is a handful the same as 35 g?

Sometimes, and sometimes it is double. Weigh it once and you will know.

Sources

1. ICMR-NIN. My Plate for the Day.
2. Aune D, et al. Nut consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease, total cancer, all-cause and cause-specific mortality: a systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of prospective studies. BMC Medicine, 2016.
3. Balakrishna R, et al. Consumption of nuts and seeds and health outcomes including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and metabolic disease, cancer, and mortality: an umbrella review. Advances in Nutrition, 2022.
4. Liu M, et al. Nut consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease events and all-cause mortality: a systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies. Archives of Cardiovascular Diseases, 2025.
5. Gayathri R, et al. Effect of almond consumption on insulin sensitivity and serum lipids among Asian Indian adults with overweight and obesity: a randomized controlled trial. Frontiers in Nutrition, 2023. Funded by the Almond Board of California.
6. Novotny JA, et al. Discrepancy between the Atwater factor predicted and empirically measured energy values of almonds in human diets. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2012.
7. Gebauer SK, et al. Food processing and structure impact the metabolizable energy of almonds. Food & Function, 2016.
8. USDA. FoodData Central (SR Legacy and Foundation entries for almonds, walnuts, cashews, pistachios, dates, dried figs and raisins).
9. NHS. 5 A Day portion sizes.
10. NHS. Foods to avoid giving babies and young children.
11. FSSAI. Food Safety and Standards (Labelling and Display) Regulations, 2020.

This article is general information, not medical advice. If you have a nut allergy, a medical condition or a restricted diet, check with your doctor or dietitian first.