How much sugar is in cashews?

Cashews carry the most sugar of the common nuts — but “most” here is still a small number. A 1 oz serving (28 g, about 18 nuts) has about 1.7 g of sugar — under half a teaspoon — from 5.9 g per 100 g. That edges out almonds (~4 g per 100 g) and roughly doubles walnuts (~2.6 g per 100 g), which is enough to make cashews taste faintly sweet and creamy. But in absolute terms it’s minor: a handful of cashews has a fraction of the sugar in a piece of fruit, and in plain or raw cashews every gram of it is natural, with nothing added.

Natural sugar — and the flavored-cashew catch

The 1.7 g in an ounce of cashews isn’t the kind of sugar dietary guidance warns about. It’s the nut’s own, packaged with fat, fiber, and minerals, not spooned on top — the same category as the natural sugar in a banana, just far less of it. Added sugar is the one to limit, and plain cashews have none: there’s no added-sugar line on a bag of raw or dry-roasted unsalted nuts. Where that changes is with flavored cashews. Honey-roasted, candied, and many “sweet and salty” coatings stack real added sugar on top of the nut’s natural 1.7 g, sometimes several grams per serving, turning a low-sugar snack into a meaningfully sweeter one. The fix is the label: check the added-sugar line on anything that isn’t plain.

Why the carb number matters more than the sugar

For a low-sugar diet, cashews’ ~1.7 g per ounce is a rounding error — not worth worrying about. The figure that actually distinguishes cashews is total carbohydrate, not sugar. Cashews are the most carb-forward common nut at about 8.5 g of total carbs per ounce (30.2 g per 100 g), and most of that is starch, not sugar. So the sweetness you taste is only a small slice of the carb load; the rest is starch that doesn’t register as “sugar” but still counts. If you’re watching carbs rather than sugar specifically, that’s the number to track — and it’s why cashews are the least keto-friendly nut even though their sugar is low. For sugar alone, though, plain cashews are an easy yes.

Cashews’ sugar is a minor footnote next to their fat and minerals. For why they’re a snack food rather than a protein source, see protein in cashews — and for honey-roasted or coated versions, always read the label’s own sugar and added-sugar lines.