Has anyone else noticed several spices if not used delicately ,pack a punch to your calories? I found out I was consuming too many to mention. I love ground black pepper, garlic powder and cinnamon to name a few, from now on I will have to count these too.

Where are you getting this from?

from what I can see, spices have only a negligible amount of calories - not enough to matter. It's ok to use freely...must have taste!!!

Myfitnesspal. I do go nuts with spices so for me it is a huge shock.

You can't use that much, can you ? 1 tsp of cinnamon is 6 calories and I don't know many recipes that use 1 tsp, pepper is also 6 calories for 1 tsp.

Interesting. Yet in all of my weight loss I've NEVER EVER counted spices of any kind, and I use a lot on foods all throughout the day. It has never hindered my weight loss in any way. I honestly cannot imagine how much you'd have to actually use to push you out of a calorie deficit.

I know there's technically calories in butter spray like Pam, and even Splenda and a calorie or 2 in diet sodas from what I understand, but I still have never counted any of those things. Unless a person really really really really goes overboard I cannot imagine it making any significant difference.

1 tablespoon black pepper has 18 calories

If you were using enough to make it be 50 calories or more a day I can see the concern, but I cannot imagine you are consuming enough to be worried about!!!

I haven't been counting them. LockitUp, it shouldn't hinder my goals to ignore adding them then? I'm trying to remember evverything is why I was considering it.

Nah, you don't need to worry about spices. For one, when we all go and log out calories on websites like caloriecount.com, there is a margin of error there. Say we are eating a cup of pasta tonight. Well, different brands can have different caloric levels.

The gist is to just log what you eat. Please don't give up spices. It will depress you. Trust me. Don't do things you don't have to. It's like punishing yourself, and there is no reason for that.

Now, go spice up that chicken breast!! :-)

Protein and carbs each contain 4 calories per gram. Fat contains 9 calories per gram, and water contains 0 calories. Food calories per gram includes the weight of protein, fat, carbohydrates, water, and minerals such as salt (which also have 0 calories). As a result, the most calories any food can contain is 9 calories per gram (and that's only if the food is made up of pure fat).

Most spices have little or no fat (which is why they can be stored almost indefinately without spoilage - fat goes rancid at room temperature eventually) Therefor most herbs and spices contain, AT MOST, 4 calories or less per gram.

Where spices and herbs are concerned, you're almost never going to use more than a couple grams (and for most spices you're not even going to use ONE gram), so the calorie counts are negligible. Especially since very often herbs and spices have very high fiber contents, and fiber calories "don't count" for humans, because we can't digest them. That means that cows and horses get calories from fiber, but humans don't.

For some strange reason, many of the online calorie counters do not subtract the fiber calories, which makes no sense to me, because they're calories humans can't access. When you're looking up calorie counts, you're generally wanting to know the impact for human beings, so why all of the counting sites don't subtract the fiber calories, I don't know. If you were counting calories for your horses and cows it would make sense to be counting those calories, but for humans we can't use those calories, so they should be subtracted, but they're often not (and worse the resources virtually never tell you whether or not they've subtracted those calories, so you either have to double check their math or make assumptions).

To ingest a large amount of calories from spices, you'ld probably make yourself sick (many spices are actually toxic in huge quantities - it's just virtually impossible to ingest enough to make you sick, because the taste would be horrific).

I think as long as you don't do the cinnamon challenge followed by pepper eating and then spice guzzling, you're good to go!

Btw, don't do the cinnamon challenge, or eat pepper or guzzle spices. That would suck.

I laughed pretty hard when I read this. I've seen videos of the cinnamon challenge and it looks pretty awful.

as long as you dont coat your food with one pound of pepper, youll be fine. you wont use enough to make a big difference in your cals. dont get too obsessive with counting...and spices make your food taste good

I don't plan to give them up. I'm just very new to watching my intakes as mucvh as i do with the mfp app. you're right ,no spices weould be depressing. Thanks.

Lol,it's funny you say that. I have a bad habit of coating things in garlic powder. i belive my guilt in that is why i asked here regarding this.

I actually count my spice calories but then I am heavy-handed with spices and use things like curry powder (6 calories per teaspoon, and I use that much and possibly more) and turmeric (7 calories per tsp- don't use that much, maybe 1/3 of a teaspoon), and black pepper (7 calories per teaspoon; which for me is not out of the realm of possibility over an entire meal) and garlic powder (7 calories per tsp- possible in a meal with a roast meat and a starch and gravy) and ginger powder (7 calories per tsp) and so on. I've counted before and often add 10-15 calories of spice to a meal.

It's not super significant, but I already don't count things like gum, vitamins and my cod liver oil supplements so I've made the conscious decision to log everything that counts as food to me.