Raw celery is a popular salad ingredient or snack that you can eat with dips, but cooked celery is another healthy choice. It is an easy side dish to prepare, or you can add it to casseroles, soups, sauces and other dishes for extra flavor and nutrients. Cooked celery provides the most health benefits as part of an overall balanced diet that includes a variety of vegetables.
Calories and Macronutrients
Cooked celery has 27 calories per cup. It has 6 g total carbohydrates, including 3.5 g natural sugars, 1 g protein and almost no fat. Celery and other low-calorie foods can help you lose weight or prevent weight gain because you can eat large portions of them without going over your calorie limit. Celery is cholesterol-free. The nutrition information here is for boiled celery, and the values will change if you add other ingredients during cooking, such as fat for frying.
Dietary Fiber
Cooked celery provides 2.4 g dietary fiber per cup. Dietary fiber lowers your cholesterol and may help you control your weight because it is a hunger-suppressing nutrient, according to the 2010 Dietary Guidelines from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Recommendations for fiber intake are to get at least 14 g per 1,000 calories that you eat, but the typical American gets less than half of that amount. Besides celery, you can get fiber from other vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, lentils and nuts.
Sodium
Boiled celery has 136 mg sodium per cup, which means that it qualifies as a low-sodium food, according to the Mayo Clinic. Low-sodium foods have less than 140 mg per serving. A high-sodium diet can cause high blood pressure and increase your risk for heart disease, stroke and kidney disease. The recommendation for healthy adults is a maximum of 2,300 mg sodium per day. If you add salt to your celery during cooking, it will have 490 mg sodium.
Other Nutrients
Cooked celery provides 426 mg potassium per cup. Potassium helps to regulate blood pressure, and healthy adults should get at least 4,700 mg per day, according to the 2010 Dietary Guidelines from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Celery has 9 mg vitamin C, or 15 percent of the daily value, and 782 international units of vitamin A, which is 16 percent of the daily value. It has 33 mcg folate, or 8 percent of the daily value.
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