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What food has surprised you because of the calorie content?
Zoejohnse91
Posts: 227 Member
Good or bad, which or what food has made you rethink your meals?
Mine today was mince beef - WHERE ARE THOSE CALORIES LURKING?!
Mine today was mince beef - WHERE ARE THOSE CALORIES LURKING?!
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Replies
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I bought a premade salad at the grocery store today that felt really, really small and light for the calories. It must have been the dressing that brought the calorie count up, because I make a much bigger salad with a lot more chicken and veggies for that calorie count.4
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Running_and_Coffee wrote: »I bought a premade salad at the grocery store today that felt really, really small and light for the calories. It must have been the dressing that brought the calorie count up, because I make a much bigger salad with a lot more chicken and veggies for that calorie count.
Dressings are like the devil in a cream suit, aren't they?! Haha8 -
Running_and_Coffee wrote: »I bought a premade salad at the grocery store today that felt really, really small and light for the calories. It must have been the dressing that brought the calorie count up, because I make a much bigger salad with a lot more chicken and veggies for that calorie count.
Dressings are like the devil in a cream suit, aren't they?! Haha
Yes, for me the Dressing on salads were the surprise. I love caesar salad but needed to be careful on how much dressing i put in it because that would defeat the purpose in having a salad at all.1 -
I was surprised by how many calories I consume by adding milk to my morning coffee (3+ cups of coffee every day). I tried replacing it with almond milk and soy milk, but did not like the taste. However, I was able to switch the sugar I add to my coffee to artificial sweetener.
I was also surprised how few calories are in New York strip steaks.
But more so than the calories, I was surprised by how much sodium was in cottage cheese.5 -
For me it was the calories the other way...I was surprised by how few calories were in a portion of rice compared to what I thought it would be. The realisation was a game changer for me.5
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Cream cheese and donuts, I thought those 2 had extra high calories, but they don't from my perspective. I can easily fit them into my diet even when I am cutting.6
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Tortilla chips. I'm not sure how so many calories fit into such a small shape.23
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On the good side, 6oz of pumpkin puree is only 93 calories. I put it in smoothies and it adds a lot of good bulk. I ate almost a pound (14oz) of strawberries as dessert for lunch - 130 calories. I love love love strawberries so this was a wonderful surprise when I started tracking.6
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coffee creamer, not so much the amount of calories (I knew it wasn't 'good') but the fact that I was using 3 servings (105 cal total) and having at least 3 cups a day (at least 315 cal/day on just the creamer) meant it added up quick1
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In a bad way: Nuts, peanut butter, raisins, chips, mangos. Pretty much anything delicious and awesome.
In a good way: Chicken thighs (better than breasts, and not a huge calorie increase), berries, cottage cheese3 -
I was surprised by how many calories I consume by adding milk to my morning coffee (3+ cups of coffee every day). I tried replacing it with almond milk and soy milk, but did not like the taste. However, I was able to switch the sugar I add to my coffee to artificial sweetener.
I was also surprised how few calories are in New York strip steaks.
But more so than the calories, I was surprised by how much sodium was in cottage cheese.
Yes! Totally agree about the NY Strip. And I love my steak, so I was super happy when I saw that. Not so happy when I saw the calories for the same amount of Ribeye LOL
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Fiber One breakfast cereal. The surprise is the low calories. I haven't tried it with milk. It's a perfectly handy little snack.3
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Nuts and granola were a bit of a mind blower - considered to be "healthy" by pop standards, but absolute calorie bombs.
I was a bit surprised at how few calories most protein sources were - steak, chicken, fish.
...and beer - that was a pleasant surprise. Easy to budget for.6 -
Crazy high per serving - whole milk yogurt, nuts, tortilla chips, any kind of sausage, wine
Surprisingly low per serving - neufchatel, sour cream, berries, popcorn, dark chocolate
For you salad dressing aficionados, try OPA by Litehouse. Blue cheese, feta dill, ranch, caeser - Creamy and delicious. Pretty low cal per serving and I can't tell the difference from the regular.2 -
this vegan poppy seed dressing at 160 calories per 2 tablespoons. that's the calorie amount for a vegan burger yikes!2
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RaeBeeBaby wrote: »Crazy high per serving - whole milk yogurt, nuts, tortilla chips, any kind of sausage, wine
I agree with all of these save for wine. I think wine is actually a bargain calorie-wise. 600 calories per 750ml bottle? Yes please!
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Surprisingly high: those little tomatoes. 31 kcal per 100 gram! That's more than strawberries, and strawberries are fruit! Guess I'll Just eat strawberries from now on..0
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The sodium in celery! Seriously, celery is like negative calories LOL but that sodium....3
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Mini brownie concrete from Freddy's Steakburger. 880 calories! I don't even know how they do that!6
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RaeBeeBaby wrote: »Crazy high per serving - whole milk yogurt, nuts, tortilla chips, any kind of sausage, wine
I agree with all of these save for wine. I think wine is actually a bargain calorie-wise. 600 calories per 750ml bottle? Yes please!
If you can stop with just one! :bigsmile: :blushing:6 -
I just mentioned this in another thread but for me when I first started out it was the number of calories in olive oil. I'd never really paid attention to the label before and thought I was being healthy by using it all the time lol.6
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I made a birthday cake for my daughters birthday a couple of days ago- our family favourite, decadent chocolate cake with chocolate icing.
Last night, I thought I’d have a piece for dessert, as I had some calories left. So I entered all the ingredients for the cake into the recipe builder in order to work out a calorie count for one piece. Around 450 calories!!! For one small piece!!!!
No thanks. I’ll have my Fibre One brownie, instead of completely blowing my calorie budget!
Finding out those calories completely cured my desire for a piece of cake!7 -
-Alcoholic beverages...wow. Had to cut those out!
-Salad dressing, I have to be really careful
-Any additive to cooking, from butter, oil, or anything you mix in to cook. I have to be really careful! es the cream soup may say it's 100 calories, but making it with milk added adds another 70 calories.
- Just generally how small of an amount you can eat of any processed food to stay within the serving size
Complicating matters for me is that many diet products now contain Sucralose to make them taste better, I'm violently allergic to it so I have to double if not triple check every label5 -
Another one I thought of is Muffins. I always thought muffins to be healthier than donuts, yet the donuts are half the calories you get from a muffin.7
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Beer. I never ever drink calories and never have, so when I started drink craft beer, it got depressing real quick.0
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I went to Kroger's and saw that an oversized cupcake was nearly 800 calories! What is it made out of, pure lard?!6
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I was really surprised how many calories mini meatballs have. I'm not even talking about the homemade, cooked in oil kind, just the frozen ones I buy for my kids. 6 have 200 calories and they are so tiny, you can eat 10 in seconds. For some reason I had this mindset that cheese, nuts and all meat products were diet foods because of all the low carb movement. You really have to be careful.1
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Leannep2201 wrote: »I made a birthday cake for my daughters birthday a couple of days ago- our family favourite, decadent chocolate cake with chocolate icing.
Last night, I thought I’d have a piece for dessert, as I had some calories left. So I entered all the ingredients for the cake into the recipe builder in order to work out a calorie count for one piece. Around 450 calories!!! For one small piece!!!!
No thanks. I’ll have my Fibre One brownie, instead of completely blowing my calorie budget!
Finding out those calories completely cured my desire for a piece of cake!
We ate at the Cheesecake Factory and I found out later that one slice had about 1,600 calories. Okay, yes it is cheesecake but still, my kids got two to share and they were big but 1,600 seems like an impossible number to have in a slice of cake.5 -
A 4 piece Dairy Queen chicken strip or steak finger basket has 1400 calories, not counting any drinks. I used to get one for dinner, sometimes once a week because it was on the way home. I had no idea what I was eating, I could only do that now if that was literally the only thing I ate for the day...
What's crazy is that they sell a 16 piece now and I just know not every one of those things goes home to a family of four...3
This discussion has been closed.
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