I'm just curious but do some of you NOT count your fruits and vegetables when counting calories? I know some people will count their fruit intake but not their vegetables.
Hiya Kim. I'm a newbie calorie counter, so I counted everything when I started a few weeks back, having jumped the WWPP ship. I still count it all.
What I found was some veg have way little calories and some have a lot. Example, lettuce, tomato, little, while broccoli has a lot. That may have something to do with the quantities eaten as well, like a slice of tomato or lettuce on a sandwich is relatively nil. However, since I'm still getting my feet wet, I count every morsel, including a sandwich lettuce or tomato slice. A generic term "tossed salad" yields relatively little calories, and you don't have to figure out every little thing that went into it.
As to the fruit, most are over 50 calories, and I count everything--especially bananas (which I tend to eat in halves out of habit anyhow).
What challenges me more, however, is "a calorie is a calorie is a calorie" because under that concept, and I had a co-worker who did exactly this, one could consume something nutritiously void but calorically sound. For 30 years I've been of the diet mindset of eating from all the food groups. I know having been very successful on WW that you are familiar with that as well. As the non-starchy veg have been a "free food" on WW for 20+ years, you might still consider them as such and not bother counting them. However, if you wanted to get the total daily picture of calories consumed, you might want to count them for a while and see the "pie chart" of where your calories are coming from.
What I like about calorie counting is that it is just that simple. I'm not concerned with the macronutrients, however, the site I use to log it all tells me that anyhow and delivers a scorecard at the end of the day.
Last edited by 124chicksinger; 10-30-2011 at 02:34 PM.
I count everything too. I think for myself, if I started not counting calories on some things, it would spill over eventually into not calorie counting at all. If it goes in my mouth I count it. 10 calories here or there can add up over the couse of a day or week.
Definitely count it. While a large apple has 80 cals, so does a cup of kale!!
On the other hand, a single large strawberry has only 8 cals, and a cup of raw cuke only 15 cals. Broccoli is really low, brussels sprouts are high. Some veg have surprisingly high cal counts. Why, I have no idea, but I'd count everything and gravitate towards the lower cal examples of each.
I try to count everything but a few things I don't. Like if I had a small piece of iceburg lettuce on my sandwich, I don't count it. The tomato slice I'll count as 5, etc.
Sometimes I put a TINY amount of mustard on my sandwich, like an unmeasurable amount-- I won't count that.
If you're giving yourself a hard time about broccoli (and not the butter or cheese sauce or white sauce it might or might not be served in) it might be worth taking a step back and trying to look objectively at what's going on.
@124, now this is weird -- broccoli florets are 15 cals for 1/2 c., while broccoli stems are 40 for 1/2 c. I guess the stems are denser plant tissue. Salad greens come in at 11 cals for a 1/2 cup. But the thing that surprised me was that kale was so high -- perhaps the leaves are much thicker or there's more stem tissue. I generally don't put anything on veg but lemon juice, or eat them raw.
I was eating raw for a few days after loading up at farmers markets and was surprised to find that one meal of mostly veg with an apple and handful of strawberries added up to 500 cals -- with absolutely nothing else but the produce. No fats, no avocado, no taters, no oil, no cheese, no dressing, no mayo, no nuthin. I doubt anyone ever got fat on produce, but if I consumed only the higher-value ones I don't think I'd lose anything either (but I sure would be regular!)
Good lord! I just realized I'm a senior member. How does that work?
Definitely count it. While a large apple has 80 cals, so does a cup of kale!!
On the other hand, a single large strawberry has only 8 cals, and a cup of raw cuke only 15 cals. Broccoli is really low, brussels sprouts are high. Some veg have surprisingly high cal counts. Why, I have no idea, but I'd count everything and gravitate towards the lower cal examples of each.
I don't mean to knitpick, but since the topic is accuracy, it seemed relevant. Your numbers don't jive with mine (so to double check, I did online searches of several sites).
I'm wondering if you're using a resource that isn't taking the fiber calories into account (but that wouldn't really explain it, either, because I couldn't find a single source that listed 1 cup of cooked kale as having 80 calories).
According to what I've found, 1 cup (88g) of raw broccoli containes about 30 calories and 1 cup (also 88g) of raw brussels sprouts have 38. That's not a huge difference.
After cooking, brussels sprouts cook down more than broccoli, but not drastically unless you're frying them or roasting them for a prolonged period of time.
That's why I generally measure my veggies raw, even if I'm going to cook them, because "shrinkage" can be so variable.
I checked several calorie counting sites, and they all l listed kale as boiled Kale as having 36 calories or less per cup, and the 36 calories was counting the calories in the fiber. When the fiber calories were subtracted, the calorie count was actually only 16 calories per cup (you can subtract the calories coming from the fiber, because fiber is a carbohydrate that humans cannot digest).
The calories don't count because humans can't break down fiber (cellulose) and it leaves the body entirely intact and unburned.
What that means is that high-fiber plant foods have more useable calories to a horse or cow (because they have gut bacteria that can break down cellulose) than for a human being. We would starve to death if we were to try to eat hay, because virtually all of the carbohydrates are cellulose. We can't get at those calories, but cows and other animals can (and just trivia - only termites are able to digest fiber without the help of probiotics. Mammals that can digest fiber are not born with the ability, it get's passed along to them from their parents (in a kind of gross way, that I won't mention but you can look up).
Since calorie counting resources are aimed at humans, I think it's quite strange that they all don't subtract the fiber calories, but some do and some do not (and almost none tell you whether they have or haven't subtracted those calories - you can only tell by checking the math.
Because humans can't digest fiber, the FDA allows food manufacturers to subtract fiber calories, but does not require them to.
It seems to me that they all should be required to subtract those calories, because it creates a misleading impression that high-fiber foods are higher in calorie than they are in actuality.
Last edited by kaplods; 10-30-2011 at 10:41 PM.
Reason: 1
Hmm, you're right although I was using loseit, which lists it as 80. I was having it raw, too, which should make it even less caloric. But Calorieking indeed comes up with your result. That makes me feel so much better, I was really wondering how that could be.
Here's one I'm thinking about. When you juice kale or other greens, how do you figure the calorie count? Is it essentially the same or is some subtracting for the discarded fiber?
I always check at least three websites when looking up calorie counts, because I've found some very weird discrepancies. All I can assume is a data-entry error, such as a typo (sometimes I can even see how they made the mistake - For example, if other sites list calorie values between 35 and 40 calories and one lists 83 calories, I'm guessing that 83 was meant to be 38 and someone transposed the numbers - sometimes I can even prove this, because the rest of the math will be right, and when I add it up it comes to 38 calories, not 83).
It's not terribly complicated math, it's just tedious. Fat = 9 calories per gram, and protein and carbs both = 4 calories per gram (but you have to subtract the fiber calories).
From a calorie perspective, it doesn't matter whether you discard the fiber or not (because those fiber calories can't be accessed), which means that juices have virtually all the calories of the whole fruit or vegetable, without the benefits of the fiber.
Fiber's benefits aren't in the calories (which can't be accessed) but in it's help in cleaning the digestive tract (acting like a broom or "scrubbie").
Of course, what get's tricky is that (as I said in my previous post) some sites erroneously do not subtract the fiber calories. If that's true, you can subtract the fiber calories (but not just for juice, but for the whole foods too, because the fiber calories "don't count.")
The challenge is in determining whether or not the calorie counting resource has done that subtraction for you or not.
To make things more complicated, some juicers are able to extract more juice than others, which can affect the calorie count (because if a vegetable or fruit isn't juiced thoroughly, there may be more than just fiber left behind). But if you have a good juicer, the only thing left behind is the fiber (which has no useable calories whether you eat it or not).
Most people just do the easiest thing and take the calorie counting resource at it's word, as it's a "worst case scenario," and assume that the juice of one apple has the calories of one apple.
Or you can look the juice values up as well (and look up kale juice, rather than kale - but to do that, you have to be able to measure just the kale juice - which means you're juicing a heck of a lot of kale). If you're just putting an assortment of veggies and fruits into your juicer, you're going to have to count the calories of the whole fruits and veggies and assume that not much has been left behind (because that's usually true with modern juices).
Personally, it's why I think juicing isn't ordinarily a very good idea (except if you need to avoid fiber for some reason, such as IBS or diverticulitis or other digestive system disorder). You get all the calories of the whole fruits and veggies, without the filling and colon-cleansing fiber.
I don't "juice" but I do puree. I throw whole fruits and veggies into my rocket blender with other smoothie ingredients - that way the fiber doesn't go to waste.
Just a by-the-way, all these factors that complicate precise calorie counting is one of the main reasons I prefer exchange plans.
Of course, that's probably because I grew up with them (and was a WW for the first time when I was only 8 years old - WW was an exchange plan until the late 90's). But working with it so long, it's almost second nature (and I've memorized so many foods, that I only need to look up foods that I have never encountered before, or eat too infrequently to have memorized).
It's a lot easier for me to remember that for most veggies, 1/2 cup cooked or 1 cup raw is equivalent to 1 veggie exchange. There are exceptions and I'm memorized most of them also, just by working with the exchange system for nearly 40 years. I know which ones are considered "bread or starch" exchanges, and which ones have larger and smaller serving sizes than others.
It's still calorie-based, and the margin of error seems to be about 5% in each direction (so my 1800 calorie exchange plan results in daily calorie levels of about 1710 - 1890 calories. But I'm not sure my "precise" calorie counting was much more accurate, because there seems to about as much discrepancy between all the different calorie counting sites.
It's also easier for me to stick to my goal to eat mostly whole foods, because whole foods are the easiest to count without having to look up (and yet, like "straight" calorie counting, you can look up online or in a book, the exchange values for almost every food in existence).
If you want to skip counting the calories for certain foods (apart from anything really tiny such as a herbal teabag or a squeeze of lemon), then calorie counting is not a good plan for you, and you'd be better off with an exchange plan or another approach. Of course all calories count! I've just checked two random days of my food log, and 16% - 20% of my calories came from fruit and veg.
Skipping certain foods while calorie counting can lead to skipping more foods, or estimating instead of recording accurately, and ending up with only the wildest estimate of how many calories you are really consuming. While "a calorie is a calorie" is a slogan that fits this situation, this really isn't about how nutritiously you eat. That's an entirely different issue. Although that said, recording everything you eat does force you to be more aware of the nutritional balance of your diet. You'd have a hard time knowing what your balance of macronutrients was if you were skipping certain foods, let alone the micronutrients which are often highest in fruit and veg.
Fruits & Vegetables
