[tiffany0809]

I had an avocado roll for lunch today and according to various websites, a 6 piece roll is only 140 calories. I had 8 pieces so I'm counting it as 187 (140 / 6 x 8). This seems awfully low but I found it on several sites.

Has anyone out there had an avocado roll and if so, how many calories did you count it as?

Thanks!!

[kaplods]

The nori sheet that they make the rolls out of, come in a standard size, so if you ordered one roll, it probably doesn't matter how many pieces you received, it would still be 140 calories. Here's why:

To use an analogy - make two sandwhiches using the same bread and fillings. Cut one sandwhich into 4 pieces and one sandwhich into 8 pieces. Which sandwhich has more calories?

Of course they have the same calories, because it doesn't matter how many pieces you cut the sandwhich into.

As for the calorie count. Avocados are high in calories, but you're not getting a whole avocado (about 280 calories), you're getting a sliver of an avocado. I've made avocado sushi at home, and you don't use much. I'd estimate that you'd get at least 20 rolls of sushi from one avocado (so the high calorie ingredient is providing no more than 14 calories to the entire sushi roll).

[Snuggler888]

This makes sense!

[shortandfluffy]

mmm.. I have been wanting sushi all day! This doesn't help :P

[tiffany0809]

So with the tiny pieces of avocado, the sheets they use to make the whole thing, and the rice, 140 calories still seems to good to be true. I understand that it doesn't matter how many pieces it is, a roll is still a roll. But for the whole roll I feel like 140 is low. If it's not, I will be eating these much more often!!

[Renwomin]

That seems sort of low to me as well. Rice can have a fair amount of calories in it. The amount of rice they use is a big factor and I've had some sushi that they added sugar to the rice!

One site I checked listed a 6 piece avocado roll at 246 calories.

http://www.peertrainer.com/DFcalorie...B.aspx?id=7639

A lot of American restaurants make sushi rolls bigger than normal. Was this a small, tight roll or a larger one? Did it have any sauce on it?

Personally I would count it around 200 calories to be safe.

[ValRock]

How big was the roll? In America, the hand rolls are at least twice as big as they are here. There can be a lot of variation.

[bronzeager]

I worked this out by hand a few weeks ago because my LoseIt app has a figure for sushi rolls too, but there is no way of knowing how big the rolls were that they used as their standard, and I know I can often cheat and make mine bigger than restaurant ones if I don't portion carefully.

Can you estimate how many cup measures the rice took up? Imagine the total size of the roll compared to the size of a tennis ball or your fist, if you don't usually use cup measures. White short-grain rice, cooked, rates at 267 calories per cup according to CalorieKing.com and a couple of other calorie sites I checked. When I make my own sushi, I usually figure calories from dry rice, 175 cal for 1/4 cup according to the brand I use. I think this is more accurate, because I know exactly the rice I used, without a possibly variable amount of water affecting the cooked size. The rice generally swells about 2x-3x size with water when cooked; this should make 1c cooked rice 233-267 cal. In sushi the rice is packed pretty tight so the 267-cal figure could probably apply.

The rice will be the majority of the calories in most rolls, unless the roller is like me and talented at stuffing, oh, a good quarter of an avocado into each roll. Is the avocado visible in the roll closer to 1/4" across or 1/2"? If the latter, it's a 1/4 avocado or 70-80 cal.

Normally a small amount of sweetener (sugar or mirin) and vinegar are added to the rice which would account for maybe a half teaspoon sugar (tops) per roll. So I would figure for a roll containing one cup rice with generous avocado, about 350 cal. Most traditional Japanese sushi chefs in restaurants that are not very Americanized DO make them much smaller than that, but "American-style" can be big, as ValRock noted above.

The What's Cooking America web site has a sushi tutorial which estimates calories for homemade rolls. But the math doesn't seem to work out there. Their instructions say use "3/4 to 1 cup of rice" per roll and then give a count of 246 cal for the avocado roll, 136 for the cucumber roll. In the second one the figure seems a bit low if they are really using the suggested amount of rice. (The total for that roll will basically be the calories of the rice, as the seaweed wrapper and cucumber have a negligible amount of calories.) What's Cooking America Sushi Tutorial

So all that probably didn't help you at all, except to suggest that maybe the figure you have could be for a roll with a fairly small amount of rice, maybe 1/2 to 2/3 cup.

[farn00a57]

ok so I just read on MSN that sushi was the number one food that you would think is "good" for you or not bad, but will make you gain weight. Is this because of the rice?

I feel like 140 for a roll or even the 187 seems awfully low too. I guess it does all depend on the size, amount of rice, etc, but that doesn't help!