Recently Linn Steward, RDN, a Culinary Nutritionist and Recipe Analyst for Gourmet Metrics, LLC, and I had an interesting exchange on LinkedIn about nutrient density. She inspired me to delve into the topic a little more deeply. Nutrient density is a measure of the nutritional content of food relative to its weight or volume. Instead of comparing 90 grams of strawberries to 250 grams of sweet potatoes, you compare the nutrients in 100 grams of individual foods to each other.
Calorie density (much like the glycemic index) can miss the point. For example, a banana has a calorie density of 89, while strawberries have a density of 32. This doesn’t mean that you should never eat another banana, though. Instead, this table could be used to understand that one could eat 1,000 grams of peaches for the same number of calories as they’d get in 100 grams of a cupcake.
Moving forward, I plan to create similar tables for other nutrients such as sugar, fiber, and fat. Leave a comment if there’s a specific nutrient that you’d be interested in seeing in the future!
Food | Calories per 100 grams |
Fruit | |
Apple | 52 |
Banana | 89 |
Blueberry | 57 |
Cherries | 63 |
Kiwi | 61 |
Peach | 39 |
Pear | 57 |
Pineapple | 50 |
Strawberry | 32 |
Watermelon | 30 |
Vegetables | |
Bell pepper | 28 |
Carrot | 35 |
Corn | 96 |
Green bean | 35 |
Mushroom | 28 |
Pea | 84 |
Spinach | 23 |
Sweet potato | 90 |
Tomato | 18 |
Zucchini | 15 |
Grains | |
Bread stuffing | 195 |
Brown rice (cooked) | 112 |
Cheerios cereal | 376 |
Ritz Crackers | 480 |
Dinner roll | 273 |
Lucky Charms cereal | 380 |
Oatmeal (cooked) | 71 |
Tortilla | 325 |
Waffle | 291 |
White bread | 266 |
Meat, Fish, Poultry | |
Chicken breast | 165 |
Chicken thigh | 214 |
Cod | 105 |
Ground beef (80% lean) | 272 |
Ham | 139 |
Lamb chop | 330 |
Pork chop | 209 |
Salmon | 206 |
Sirloin steak | 243 |
Venison | 150 |
Dairy | |
Buttermilk | 40 |
Cheddar cheese | 404 |
Cottage cheese | 98 |
Fruit-flavored yogurt | 95 |
Mozzarella cheese | 300 |
Plain yogurt | 63 |
Ricotta cheese | 138 |
Skim milk | 34 |
Sour cream | 198 |
Whole milk | 61 |
Sweets and Snacks | |
Cheetos | 560 |
Chex mix | 418 |
Chocolate chip cookie | 492 |
Chocolate ice cream | 216 |
Frosted cupcake | 389 |
Nutrigrain cereal bar | 324 |
Pop-Tart | 385 |
Potato chips | 532 |
Pretzels | 384 |
Snickers candy bar | 491 |
Fast Food | |
Arby’s Beef N’ Cheddar | 225 |
Burger King Whopper | 237 |
Dairy Queen Blizzard | 248 |
Fried chicken sandwich | 294 |
French fries | 312 |
KFC Original Drumstick | 242 |
Milkshake | 119 |
Panera Bread Thai Chicken Salad | 98 |
Single-patty cheeseburger | 236 |
Starbucks White Chocolate Mocha | 89 |
Fascinating. I was surprised meat wasn’t higher
LikeLike