Calorie chart: calories and protein in 80 common foods

This calorie chart lists 80 everyday foods, each with a portion, its weight in grams, the calories (kcal) and the grams of protein. Find the food, compare your portion with the row, and scale. Every value comes from USDA FoodData Central, so treat it as typical: brands, fruit sizes and trims differ a little, and for packaged food the label beats the chart.

If you would rather skip the lookup altogether, HeyCoach does it for you inside WhatsApp: send a photo of your plate and the calories and protein come straight back, and you can try it free for five days.

How to use the numbers

The portion column gives a household measure, then the weight in grams. The grams are what count: cups vary, 158 g of cooked rice does not. To scale a row, divide by the portion weight and multiply by what you ate, so 200 g of cooked rice is 205 × 200 ÷ 158 = 260 kcal.

• Weights are the edible part, without peel, pit, bone or skin unless the row says so.
• Meat and fish are cooked, with no added oil. Rice, pasta, couscous, beans and lentils are cooked; oats appear dry and cooked.
• Calories above 50 are rounded to the nearest 5, protein to the nearest gram.

Tracking on paper? Pair this page with a notebook: how to track calories without an app.

Fruit

Fresh fruit is mostly water and carbohydrate. Dried fruit is the calorie exception: two Medjool dates beat a whole banana.

Vegetables

Non-starchy vegetables are the cheapest calories on the page: a cup of cooked spinach is about 40 kcal with 5 g of protein. Starchier peas cost more: half a cup is about twice a whole pepper.

Grains, bread & starches

Logs often go wrong here, because rice and oats can be weighed dry or cooked. Every row says which; the raw-vs-cooked section below explains why it matters.

Meat, fish, eggs & plant proteins

The meat and fish rows are 100 g, so they double as per-100 g values. Beans and lentils add fiber but give less than half the protein per calorie of chicken or tuna; for snacks ranked by that ratio, see high-protein snacks.

Dairy & alternatives

Greek yogurt and cottage cheese are the protein standouts. Unsweetened soy milk nearly matches skim milk on protein; unsweetened almond milk has almost none.

Fats, nuts & seeds

Everything here is calorie-dense, which is fine. It just means the spoon matters more than anywhere else in the chart.

Drinks & extras

A can of regular beer and a can of cola both land on about 155 kcal; a shot of spirits is about 95 before the mixer.

Calorie density: why some plates fill you up for less

Calorie density is calories per 100 g, and it explains why two plates that look alike can differ by hundreds of calories.

So 100 kcal buys a little over two cups of strawberries, nearly two cups of cooked broccoli, about 14 almonds or less than a tablespoon of olive oil. None is a bad food; they just fill you very differently.

People tend to eat a fairly steady weight of food. In Barbara Rolls's review of the research, lowering the energy density of meals, often with water-rich fruit and vegetables, reduced how much people ate. Build the volume of a plate from the top of this table and use the bottom rows for flavor, measured.

Raw vs cooked: why your rice can be off by more than half

USDA lists uncooked white rice at 365 kcal per 100 g and cooked white rice at 130. Cooking adds water, not calories, so rice almost triples in weight.

Mix up the entries and the error is huge. Log 75 g of dry rice as cooked and you record about 100 kcal for a portion holding about 275. Log 150 g of cooked rice with a raw entry and a 195-kcal portion becomes 550.

Other dry staples work the same way: pasta is 371 kcal per 100 g dry and 158 cooked, lentils 352 and 116, oats 379 and 71 (cooked in water).

Meat goes the other way, losing water in the pan. Raw skinless chicken breast is 120 kcal and 22.5 g protein per 100 g; roasted, it is 165 kcal and 31 g. Same calories, smaller piece.

Weigh food in the state your entry describes, and stay consistent. For a pot of chili or curry, how to calculate calories in a recipe shows how to weigh the raw ingredients and the finished pot.

Oils and sauces: the calories that go missing

A chart lists foods plain; kitchens rarely cook them that way. Olive, canola and soybean oil all list 884 kcal per 100 g, so a tablespoon is about 120 kcal whichever bottle you pour. A large egg is about 70 kcal; USDA's large fried egg is about 90, and since cooking cannot add calories, most of that extra 20 is pan fat.

Sauces add up too: two tablespoons of mayonnaise are about 190 kcal, and a cup of canned coconut milk in a curry about 445. For a week or two, measure oil, dressings and nut butters; how to count calories covers which foods deserve a spoon and which can be eyeballed.

A worked example: a lunch bowl from the chart

A burrito-style bowl: rice, black beans, chicken, avocado and salsa, with the chicken cooked in a teaspoon of olive oil.

Each line comes from the chart. The rice is 205 × 150 ÷ 158 = 195; the chicken is 1.2 times the 100 g row (198, rounded to 200); the avocado is half the half-avocado row and the oil a third of the tablespoon row.

Call it 650 kcal and 51 g of protein. Two slips would change it most: a freehand tablespoon of oil adds 80 kcal, and logging the cooked rice with a raw entry would push the bowl past 1,000.

HeyCoach does this arithmetic for you when you send a photo of the bowl or describe it in one sentence, and if the oil was really a tablespoon, a short reply corrects the total.

FAQ

How many calories should a meal have?

It depends on your daily target. On 1,800 kcal with three meals and a snack, that is roughly 500 kcal per meal and 300 for the snack. Get your number from the calorie calculator or how to calculate a calorie deficit.

How do I find the calories in a food?

Use the label for packaged food, published nutrition for chain restaurants, and a chart like this one or USDA FoodData Central for whole foods, matching raw or cooked. Photos work too, though portions are the hard part; see how AI calorie counting from a photo works.

Are calorie charts accurate?

They are good averages, not measurements of your plate: a large banana, a fattier cut or a different recipe shifts the number. Labels have slack too; FDA guidance treats a label as out of compliance on calories when a lab finds more than 20% above the declared value. Consistent entries plus a few weeks of weight trend tell you whether your numbers work.

Why do apps show different calories for the same food?

They mix USDA data, brand labels and entries typed in by other users, which disagree on portion size, raw versus cooked and recipe. Pick a well-sourced entry and reuse it; which calorie counter app is most accurate explains where the errors come from.

Do you count calories raw or cooked?

Either, as long as the entry matches what you weighed. Raw is more consistent for meat, rice and pasta; cooked is easier when you serve one plate from a shared pot. Never weigh one way and log the other.

Sources

• USDA FoodData Central (all chart values, SR Legacy data)
• FDA guidance on nutrition-labeling databases and the 120% compliance rule for calories
• FDA guide to using the Nutrition Facts label
• Rolls, the relationship between dietary energy density and energy intake

The easy way to do this

A chart is great for learning what a portion looks like, but nobody wants to divide by 158 grams at dinner. HeyCoach lives in WhatsApp, which is already open, so you can snap the plate or type "rice, beans, chicken, avocado" and get kcal, protein, carbs and fat back in seconds, while a photo of a nutrition label is read exactly as printed. Save your usual bowl and it re-logs by name, and a quick reply fixes any portion, even days later. Say hi to HeyCoach today and try it on your next meal: five days of Pro free, no card, then $4.99 a month.