Sugar cookies are simple treats made with flour, butter and eggs. Depending on the recipe, you will need either baking powder or baking soda in order for the cookies to rise. Some recipes call for flavoring, such as vanilla, unsweetened chocolate or cinnamon.
Nutrition Facts
One recipe for generic sugar cookies used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Nutrient Database contains 72 calories per serving with 3 g of fat, 8 mg of cholesterol, 54 mg of sodium, 10 g of carbohydrates and 6 g of sugar. As long as you stick to eating one cookie, sugar cookies are not a high-calorie food. One serving is equivalent to one cookie. The U.S. Food and Drug administration considers foods containing 40 to 99 calories per serving to be low calorie. Foods with 100 to 399 calories are moderately high, and foods with more than 399 calories are high in calories.
Sugar
The American Heart Association suggests limiting your consumption of added sugars to no more than half of your daily calorie intake. Healthy women should consume at most 6 tsp. or 100 calories a day from sugar. Healthy men should keep their sugar intake at 9 tsp., or 150 calories a day. At 6 g of sugar per cookie, that amounts to 24 calories from sugar. So one cookie is well below the threshold for a healthy person's sugar limit for the day.
Sodium
With 54 mg of sodium, sugar cookies contain 2 percent of the recommended daily allowance, RDA, of the important dietary mineral. MayoClinic.com reports that sodium maintains fluid levels and transmits nerve impulses. Too much sodium, however, can lead to high blood pressure. Healthy adults only need between 1500 to 2300 mg of sodium a day.
Fat
Generic sugar cookies have 5 percent of the RDA for fat and 4 percent for saturated fat. Too much saturated fat can raise bad cholesterol and has been linked to heart disease. Healthy adults should limit fat intake to between 44 and 78 g daily.
Cholesterol
Sugar cookies contain 3 percent of the RDA of cholesterol. While your cells need some cholesterol to function properly, too much can cause plaque to grow on artery walls, which leads to cardiovascular disease. According to MayoClinic.com, your body makes all of the cholesterol it needs, and adults should limit their dietary cholesterol intake to less than 300 mg a day.
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