Ok, I love pop-corn, I love it. So I went out and got a pop-corn machine to lower calories. I make pop-corn every night with a touch of salt. And I snack on it instead of anything else high in calories.
My question is how does it factor in with my diet? Is it bad?
Does anyone know the calories of half a cup unpopped kernels? I looked it up and it said that 1/2 cup unpopped is 110 calories but 500 after you pop it. Wow 500 seems like a lot and its freaking me out. Now granted I don't eat all of it but a good half. I really thought it was lower in calories.

From my understanding 1/2 a cup of kernals is 2 cups of cooked popcorn.

Looking online a cup of air popped popcorn is roughly 60 calories- so that 500 calories I'm not sure what is factored in, could they be factoring in oil or butter?

I mean 60 calories for a cup is good caloriewise but for me popcorn is high carb so I wouldn't eat it that often.

I agree...I think the 500 is factoring in the oil it takes to cook it, and maybe added butter. Overall, unless you are on a low carb diet, snacking on popcorn isn't that bad. I wouldn't feel right about doing it EVERY night because I think there are more nutritional snacks you could use to snack on...like fresh apples or yogurt etc. But if it works for you, and keeps your cravings at bay, why not. I for one think there are certain things a "diet" needs to incorporate to fit into your life if it's going to be long lasting. For example: I refuse to give up coffee. I have switched to lower calorie flavored creamer and Splenda instead of getting the full fat cappuccino I normally would have, and I've limited myself to 2 cups a day, but I still have it in my day. So snack away.

For some reason, it seems really hard to get nutritional information about popcorn that isn't obscured in some way.

I recently bought a hot-air popper and tried to figure out how many calories there are in air-popped popcorn. For the brand I bought, a half cup of unpopped kernels seems to have about 300 calories and pops up to 2 or 3 quarts. YMMV, of course.

I love popcorn too. The unpopped kernels I bought say that 3 tbs of just unpopped kernels (no oil) is 120 calories.

There are 8 tbs in a half cup... So I think that would be about 320 cals.

Have you ever tried nutritional yeast? I put it on popcorn and its delish. Like seriously amazing.