- Home
- The scale
- TutorialsSet up and use your scale, step by step
- The FundamentalsCalories and macros, explained simply
- Calorie and macro calculatorYour daily targets in one minute
- Macros Decoded guidebookThe free guide to your body goals
- BlogRecipes, tips and nutrition science
- Our storyWhy we build ScaleMyPlate in Canada
- Affiliate
- 30-day trial
- Free shipping
- 1-year warranty
How many calories are on this plate?
Three ordinary home plates, every food weighed to the gram. Make your guess, then see the real number food by food, including the extras most people never count.
- 3everyday plates
- 1minute to play
- gweighed, USDA data
Why your eyes are bad at counting calories
Eyeballing a plate means guessing two things at once: how much food is there, and how dense each food is. Portion size is the easy part to see. Energy density is not. A spoonful of rice and a spoonful of butter look about the same size, but the butter carries roughly five and a half times the calories per gram.
This is not a willpower problem. In a well known study in the New England Journal of Medicine, people who said they could not lose weight on a low calorie diet underreported what they actually ate by an average of 47%, measured with lab methods rather than food diaries. The people were not lying; estimating food is simply hard for everyone.
The biggest misses are almost always the same: cooking oil, butter, dressings and sauces. They are small, they spread out, and they often disappear into the food. One tablespoon of olive oil (13.5 g) adds about 119 kcal, which can be a fifth of a whole lunch.
How to count the calories on any plate
Put the plate on a kitchen scale, press tare, add one food, write down the grams, tare again. Any kitchen scale works. Here is how to check that yours is accurate.
Find each food's calories per 100 g, ideally cooked values for cooked food. Learn where calorie numbers come from and which database entries to trust.
Weigh the oil, butter or dressing before it goes in the pan or on the plate. This single step closes most of the gap between a guess and the real number.
Example from plate 2: cooked white rice has 130 kcal per 100 g. 200 g on the plate gives 130 × 200 ÷ 100 = 260 kcal.
Calories per 100 g of the foods in this game
| Food (cooked unless noted) | kcal / 100 g |
|---|
Values from USDA FoodData Central (SR Legacy). Brands and recipes vary, so check your own labels when you can.
Questions about counting a plate
How can I tell how many calories are on my plate?
Weigh each food in grams, multiply by its calories per 100 g and divide by 100, then add everything up, including oil, butter and sauces. Guessing by eye is usually off by a lot, so weighing even a few typical meals teaches you what real portions look like.
How many calories are in a normal dinner plate?
There is no single number. The three plates in this game land between about 550 and 650 kcal, and the same plate can swing by 150 kcal or more just from how much oil or butter is used.
What do people forget to count most often?
Cooking fats, spreads, dressings and sauces. They are small in volume but very dense: about 9 kcal per gram of fat, compared with about 4 for protein and carbs. One tablespoon of oil is about 119 kcal.
Should I weigh food raw or cooked?
Either works as long as the database entry matches. Raw chicken and cooked chicken have different calories per 100 g because cooking removes water. If you weigh it cooked, use a cooked entry.
How many calories should my plate be?
It depends on your daily target and how many meals you eat. Use the free calorie and macro calculator to get your daily number, then split it across your meals.
- USDA FoodData Central, SR Legacy entries for each food listed above: fdc.nal.usda.gov
- Lichtman SW et al. Discrepancy between self-reported and actual caloric intake and exercise in obese subjects. N Engl J Med. 1992;327:1893-1898. PubMed
- General information, not medical advice.