A staple of the Middle-Eastern diet and hors d' oeuvres the world over, hummus can be either a boon or a bust to your diet. A garbanzo bean-based paste, this dip can be loaded on anything from carrots to tortilla chips, and can be added to sandwiches or used to stuff chicken breasts. Whether it's fattening or not depends upon the ingredients, how you use it, how much you eat and how often you use it.
Store-Bought
Classic hummus is a mixture of garbanzo beans, tahini, garlic, olive oil and lemon juice, but it's not uncommon to add toppings ranging from roasted red pepper to olive tapenade. According to the USDA Nutrient Database, commercially-prepared hummus has about 25 calories and 1.4 g of fat per tablespoon. So far, it looks like a healthy snack that could easily fit into a balanced diet -- until you realize that many people pile a tablespoon of hummus onto each chip they dip, then go back again and again. Only four dips in this fashion will give you 100 calories, on top of the calories in the chips themselves. Make this a habit, and the pounds will creep on unless you compensate elsewhere in your diet.
Homemade
Making your own hummus at home allows you to customize the ingredients to reduce calories as low as you'd like. Tahini is the first thing to skip -- as long as the other seasonings are strong, you probably won't notice any taste difference. A typical hummus recipe calls for about 3 tbsp. of tahini, and skipping it knocks 267 calories and 24 g of fat off the batch. Garlic, lemon juice and spices are so low-calorie that they need not be considered, and you cannot skip the garbanzo beans, or you would end up with salad dressing instead of hummus. So the only remaining ingredient is olive oil, which is used primarily for texture. At 119 calories and 13.5 g of fat per tablespoon (USDA # 04053), reducing the amount you use can help lighten the dip. You can also eliminate it entirely and use water to thin the bean paste.
Uses
Hummus is typically used as a dip for flatbread and pita, but it also goes well with raw veggies like carrots, celery and broccoli. Using veggies instead of starchy breads means you only have to worry about the calories from the hummus itself. Avoid fried chips and crackers, which have the added burden of a high fat content as well as high calories. Hummus also makes an exotic sandwich topping, and because you only use an amount that fits on the sandwich, you are less likely to consume more than a single two-tablespoon serving.
Considerations
Of course, even the highest-calorie hummus can fit into the healthiest diet with the right planning, and even the lowest-calorie hummus can make you fat if you eat too much. Don't consider hummus a "free" food just because you eat it with vegetables. Plan it into your diet for the day, and compensate for the extra calories by cutting out another food. Keep portion sizes in mind. If you are snacking alone, spoon out a serving onto a plate and put the rest of the hummus away so you won't be tempted to munch mindlessly. If you are at a party, dip your carrot stick and move on -- don't stand around the hummus, or you'll be tempted to dive back in.
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