How To Find The Caloric Content Of Food

Knowing the caloric content of food is important in managing your weight and making healthy food choices. Sometimes it is quick and easy to determine the caloric content of food. In other cases, a bit more legwork is required. However, as you start to look up the caloric content of your favorite foods over and over again, you will start to memorize the amount of calories in each serving, lessening the work required of calorie counting.

Step 1

Review the nutrition label on the food's packaging. The calories per serving will be on the first line of the label, says "Contemporary Nutrition." Be sure to note the serving size when counting your calories. For example, the serving size of many cereals is 1 cup, so if you eat 2 cups of cereal for breakfast, remember to multiply the calories in one serving by two to determine how many calories are in your bowl of cereal.

Step 2

Look up the caloric content of foods without a nutrition label in a calorie book or online database. For example, the USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference says that 1 cup of skim milk is 86 calories.

Step 3

Use a calorie book or online database to locate the caloric content of each ingredient when cooking at home. Add up the caloric content of the ingredients to determine the total number of calories in the dish. For example, if you are making a peanut butter sandwich, you may see that two slices of whole wheat bread is 160 calories and 2 tbsp. of peanut butter is 180 calories. You would add the calories of the bread and peanut butter together to determine that a peanut butter sandwich has 340 calories.