Fat-Free vs. Regular Calorie Comparison
article syndicated from FDA
updated on 09/01/2006 at 02:09PM
You can lose weight by eating fewer calories and by increasing your physical activity. Reducing the amount of total fat and saturated fat that you eat is one way to limit your overall calorie intake. However, eating fat-free or reduced-fat foods isn't always the answer to weight loss. A fat-free food is not necessarily low in calories; in fact, it could be higher in calories because of added sugars. Calories may also be added when you eat more of the reduced-fat or fat-free food than you would of the regular item. For example, if you eat twice as many fat-free cookies as you would regular cookies you actually have increased your overall calorie intake. The following list of foods and their reduced-fat varieties demonstrates that just because a product is fat-free, it doesn't mean that it is "calorie-free."
| Fat-Free or Reduced Fat | Regular | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Calories | Calories | ||
| Reduced-fat peanut butter, 2 T | 187 | Regular peanut butter, 2 T | 191 |
| Reduced-fat chocolate chip cookies, 3 cookies (30 g) | 118 | Regular chocolate chip cookies, 3 cookies (30 g) | 142 |
| Fat-free fig cookies, 2 cookies (30 g) | 102 | Regular fig cookies, 2 cookies (30 g) | 111 |
| Nonfat vanilla frozen yogurt (<1% fat), 1/2 cup | 100 | Regular whole milk vanilla frozen yogurt (3-4% fat), 1/2 cup | 104 |
| Light vanilla ice cream (7% fat), 1/2 cup | 111 | Regular vanilla ice cream (11% fat), 1/2 cup | 133 |
| Fat-free caramel topping, 2 T | 103 | Caramel topping, homemade with butter, 2 T | 103 |
| Low-fat granola cereal, approx. 1/2 cup (55 g) | 213 | Regular granola cereal, approx. 1/2 cup (55 g) | 257 |
| Low-fat blueberry muffin, 1 small (2 1/2 inch) | 131 | Regular blueberry muffin, 1 small (2 1/2 inch) | 138 |
| Baked tortilla chips, 1 oz. | 113 | Regular tortilla chips, 1 oz. | 143 |
| Low-fat cereal bar, 1 bar (1.3 oz.) | 130 | Regular cereal bar, 1 bar (1.3 oz.) | 140 |
Source: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
Nutrient data taken from Nutrient Data System for Research, Nutrition Coordinating Center, University of Minnesota.
Article syndicated from U.S. Food and Drug Administration:
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2002/chrt_calcomp.html
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