Unexpected calories.

Today I decided to enter the recipe for my favourite salad into the recipe analyser and was amazed to find out it has over 1000 calories.

What foods have you found that have a surprisingly large amount of calories?

Wow, what's in your favourite salad?!

I had a similar experience when I used to drizzle a good amount of extre virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar over my salads. I thought nothing of it until I decided to pop it into the food browser and nearly had a heart attack!

Entire tin of chickpeas, and a fairly good amount of olive oil and lemon juice as dressing. As well as yummy things like chillies, onion, tomatoes and basil. It's delicious, but definitely high in calories. It is rather filling though which I suppose is a plus. Got me through a 9 hour day at TAFE without me getting hungry which is awesome.

Any suggestions for a lower calorie dressing for my salads? It's summer over here and so I've been eating a lot of them.

Yes, most oils such as olive, canola, corn, peanut, etc. seem to often have 120 calories per tablespoon in them.  I don't think necessarily that oils like olive are bad for us--in fact, I think in moderation extra virgin olive oil is healthy; but I was certainly surprised as to how many calories were in one tablespoon.  I have found sunflower oil that has 108 calories per tablespoon.  But at first I was using a lot of evoo in cooking not realizing how many calories were in it.

I love a low-calorie dressing (30 calories per 2 tablespoons) called Mrs Ott's Famous Fat Free Dressing; it is a French-style dressing.  I pretty much only use it on my shredded lettuce and shredded cabbage salads.

Low fat yogurts! An individual pot of the low fat fruity yoghurt I like is 160 cals! I had no idea it was so sweetened :-/  Thats more calories than a bag of crisps (potato chips). So i've started buying low fat natural yoghurt to eat at home. Its a pain at work though, and the fat-free stuff is 60cals of yeeeuuuuccckkkk.

I was also really surprised at sausages (British kind, not sweet american breakfast kind). I though that 2 sausages would be ok.... and M&S english muffins. So small, so 200cals.....

And milk - I prefer skim, but use semi-skimmed at work since there is no skim. I figured I was having about 50 cals a day of milk in tea, and it was more like 150.

I like making chickpea salads - I tend to dress them with a tsp of extra virgin olive oil per can and lots of lemon juice - I really like them that way.

Original Post by holsfisher:

Low fat yogurts! An individual pot of the low fat fruity yoghurt I like is 160 cals! I had no idea it was so sweetened :-/  Thats more calories than a bag of crisps (potato chips). So i've started buying low fat natural yoghurt to eat at home. Its a pain at work though, and the fat-free stuff is 60cals of yeeeuuuuccckkkk.

 The only brand of Plain, Fat Free Yogurt I have found that I like is Stoneyfield Farm Organic Yogurt. It's low in calories, high in nutrients, and you can add anything you want to it to dress it up. I buy frozen berries and mix them in and add some cinnamon. It's really good! (And sometimes as a treat I will add a few dark chocolate chips ;) If you can find that brand, that's a good one.

I love mexican food, and the Burrito I was getting, which was loaded with veggies and beans and not much else was actually loaded (LOADED!!!!) with SALT and saturated Fat. Like bathed in it there was so much. Something crazy like 4000mg of salt and 10g of sat fat. No wonder it tasted so good. :( No more.

I have also had a 1000 calorie salad before without realizing it. Olive Oil is healthy in moderation, but it can add up quickly. I now keep EVOO in a spray bottle and spritz it on my salads.

Samantha 135 - I am in the UK so have a more limited choice! I'm generally buying Yeo Valley Organic when its on offer because its sssoooo nice and Sainsburys Basics the rest of the time (because its ssoooo cheap!)

Another thing I realised today - Bananas. Always more cals than I realise. I tot up cals in my head and kind of forget to include fruit because its good for you. When I count it, its kind of dissappointing.

Original Post by holsfisher:

Samantha 135 - I am in the UK so have a more limited choice! I'm generally buying Yeo Valley Organic when its on offer because its sssoooo nice and Sainsburys Basics the rest of the time (because its ssoooo cheap!)

Another thing I realised today - Bananas. Always more cals than I realise. I tot up cals in my head and kind of forget to include fruit because its good for you. When I count it, its kind of dissappointing.

 Bananas are much higher in cals than most other fruit, but they are high in potassium, which actually helps combat water weight from salt. So even though they are calorie dense (they are also one of the more filling fruits) I make sure to eat one every day :)

Honestly, and I know we already know that this is a fattening food, but, a honey bun. Before I started counting my calories, I used to eat 'em like it was nobody's business. Until I found out that they are over 600 calories each. And I couldn't eat just one.

Nuts and soft cheeses.

I love walnuts and chevre on my salad, but have had to cut WAY back on how much I put on. I now weigh out 10g. of chevre and crumble 3 or 4 walnuts onto my salad.

salad dressings! seriously something healthy like a salad can turn into something terrible for you with the addition of some of those dressings...

I logged going to Buffalo Wild Wings (which I knew wasn't going to look pretty) but was rather shocked to find out that 4 oz of ranch dressing were higher in calories than the 6 bbq soaked wings I had to eat it with it. 

salad really can be deceiving :( for me...probably cinnamon. i never knew cinnamon had calories and i over indulge on cinnamon to the extreme

Cinnamon, calories? I never really thought about that, just sort of... ADD AWAY! ha ha! It's healthy though so don't feel guilty about that...

The calories I am shocked about are the ones found in ONE measly little olive, granted I eat em up without guilt but in one tiny guy there is like 10 calories... (?) Eh, oh well, still SO GOOD and SO WORTH IT! ha ha!

Original Post by heatherzilla:

Entire tin of chickpeas, and a fairly good amount of olive oil and lemon juice as dressing. As well as yummy things like chillies, onion, tomatoes and basil. It's delicious, but definitely high in calories.

 

 Be aware that when you enter beans in the Recipe Analyzer, it thinks you're talking about dried beans. So if you enter "1 cup chickpeas", the analyzer gives you the cals for "1 cup DRY beans", which is probably equal to 3 cups cooked chickpeas.

I love salad and I enjoyed it as a snacks...

I agree with salad.... I mean I knew about dressing but the OTHER things.  Like I never considered salad veggies as even having calories.... and if there's a little bit of walnut or almond with dried cherries it doesn't seem like much ... with a pinch of feta... but then you realize YIKES.

Original Post by cellophane_star:

Original Post by heatherzilla:

Entire tin of chickpeas, and a fairly good amount of olive oil and lemon juice as dressing. As well as yummy things like chillies, onion, tomatoes and basil. It's delicious, but definitely high in calories.

 

 Be aware that when you enter beans in the Recipe Analyzer, it thinks you're talking about dried beans. So if you enter "1 cup chickpeas", the analyzer gives you the cals for "1 cup DRY beans", which is probably equal to 3 cups cooked chickpeas.

Thanks for that. I never realised it did that. Is it the same for things like lentils and beans?

Liquid Coffee Creamer. God, I love coffee with french vanilla or vanilla-caramel creamer. The thing is though, if you use the serving size - 1 tablespoon - I don't even taste the vanilla or caramel. I have to say though, I have bigger mugs that hold about 11oz of coffee, not 8oz.
So this makes me use 3 tablespoons to actually really have the sweet vanilla caramel flavor in my life elixir, which is 105 calories for the creamer.

Then again this sweetens the coffee enough to not having to use additional sugar, but still I am going to try the sugar free version of french vanilla. Unfortunately I haven't seen vanilla-caramel n sugar free yet.

And about the salad dressings, I usually use a tablespoon of EVOO and as much balsamic vinegar as needed. I like the fruity-sour flavor of the balsamic vinegar and it goes with any kind of lettuce based salad, tomatos, shredded carrots, onions, hot peppers, whichever, and it adds only 5 calories per tablespoon. It has 2 grams of sugar in each of those though, but I prefer that over all the fat and especially SODIUM in the dressings you can buy.

And yes, extra virgin olive oil IS healthy, since 10 of the 14 grams fat in a tablespoon are monounsaturated.

I also never realized how much sugar is in everything. And I don't mean commercially processed food, I mean things like some vegetables, milk, etc.

Another thing that I used to indulge in on a somewhat regular basis, but have since really cut back on--definitely moderation in all things applies to my new approach--concerns stouts.  Namely, I used to a few times to several times a week drink high-calorie, high-alc. content Russian Imperial Stouts, many different brands.  It was only after beginning my diet and exercise regimen that when I was logging into my data base calories for most beers, especially light beers, that I began to realize just how many calories were in those stouts.  Some of my favorite stouts had as many as 200-400 calories per bottle.  

Original Post by heatherzilla:

Original Post by cellophane_star:

Be aware that when you enter beans in the Recipe Analyzer, it thinks you're talking about dried beans. So if you enter "1 cup chickpeas", the analyzer gives you the cals for "1 cup DRY beans", which is probably equal to 3 cups cooked chickpeas.

Thanks for that. I never realised it did that. Is it the same for things like lentils and beans?

 Yep, if you enter lentils or beans in the Recipe Analyzer, it will think you're referring to dried goods.