Have you ever found yourself wondering – how many calories IS in that ….pasta, potato, yam, beet, corn, squash etc.?

I think of these foods in terms of how many calories are in them on average per gram.  So if you eat 100g of a particular food cooked, you can calculate how many calories you’re taking in.  The list below gives you what we’ve worked out at Spectrum Nutrition as the average ‘calories per gram’ in certain foods:

• Cooked pasta (includes white, smart and whole wheat) = 1.4 calories per gram
• Squash = 0.5 calories per gram
• Corn (kernels) = 0.7 calories per gram (about 100 calories per cobb)
• Potato, sweet potato and yam = 0.8 calories per gram
• Beets = 0.8 calories per gram
• Avocados:  
  • Hass (small ones) = 1.7 calories per gram
  • Florida (large ones) = 1.2 calories per gram

So you can see if you eat 150g of cooked potatoes (about 1 cup) that’s going to ‘cost’ you only 120 calories – now that’s some information you can use!