Calorie per gram, I thought I invented that!

amusedmonkey

So I'm a volume (mass?) eater, I always have been. That's how I ended up this way. When I decided to lose weight, my main problem was cutting down portion sizes (mine were at least triple the recommended amount). Along the way I've learned a few tricks - blended broth based soups have a very low calorie density per gram which makes them a great and delicious pre-meal option, heck even cream based soups aren't that bad! My cream of mushroom with evaporated milk instead of cream clocks 350 calories per half a kilo (a little over a pound), and the butter stays!!

I digress..

At first, whenever I got excited about a low calorie recipe on the internet I had to face the reality that some of them had servings so tiny even a 2 year old would scoff at (a 1/4 cup calorie rice pudding serving anyone?). Being the geek I am, I came up with the calorie per gram ratio concept to sort my recipes. I would use about.com's recipe calculator, since it shows the approximate weight of a serving along with the calories. An average meal would have about a ratio of 1 for me, but if I feel like having something with a high calorie ratio, I know to look at my "less than 0.5" collection to combine with and bulk up the weight of my overall meal.

Today I was randomly searching for a quinoa recipe (never had it before, so I don't even know what to do with it), and I stumbled across foodily.com.. Damn it!! They stole my concept! I'm not complaining.. It took most of the grunt work out for me and I'm happy :bigsmile:

bethlaf

there is always someone doing exactly what we are doing,

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amusedmonkey

i dont even understand what calorie per grams means?

It means how many calories a gram of food carries. Example: An average large-ish tomato is about 180 grams (6.3 oz) and has 32 calories. 32 divided by 180 is almost 0.2 which means it has a low calorie density (less than 1-1.5). This means you can literally eat pounds of it if you wish without worrying it would screw your calorie budget. Now take butter, a tablespoon is about 14 grams and it has 102 calories. divide 102 by 14 and you get 7.2 which is MUCH higher than 1-1.5. You can't eat pounds of butter and expect to stay within your calorie budget. Now everyone knows butter has more calories than tomatoes, but when you are looking at your recipes at a glance without needing to read the ingredients, this helps a lot. It also opens up quite a few possibilities for me: instead of sticking to the given servings I just know how much I can have within my budget or how much 100 calories of something would weigh.

Basically, I know I need to eat a pound of food a meal as a minimum to feel satisfied, and this rating helps me know at a glance which of my recipes are too high in calorie and would need a lower density food to fill the volume up. I like it better than servings because different people have different cups while a gram is always a gram. Not to mention some foods are hard to measure in cups and you don't always cut your cookies evenly.

It sounds a bit geeky, but I really enjoy doing this.

Shropshire1959

Oh Calorie density .. never heard of it before :-p

amusedmonkey

Settled on this http://www.foodily.com/r/003ef06f5c-healthy-3-bean-and-quinoa-chili-by-shape-magazine

370 calories per 1.3 pounds of food. Not bad and sounds yummy.