Meal Calorie Counter

How to Use the Meal Calorie Counter

1. Search for a food in the box above and pick it from the list. It shows that food's calories straight away.
2. Set the amount. Enter the quantity and choose a unit: grams, ml, oz, cups, or one of the food's own servings, such as 1 medium banana.
3. Tap Add to Meal. You can tag the food as breakfast, lunch, dinner or a snack first.
4. Add the rest of the plate. Change the grams of any food in the list, or remove it.
5. Read Your Meal. The total calories and the protein, carbs, fat and fibre appear above the list, with a full breakdown below it.
6. Enter how many people it serves to see the values for one serving. You can also print the meal, copy it, share it, or save it as a template to reuse later.

How to Calculate the Calories of a Meal

Every food in our database is stored per 100g. For each food, the counter multiplies the per 100g value by your amount and divides by 100, then adds the foods together. For 40g of dry porridge oats, which have 379 kcal per 100g, that is 379 times 40 divided by 100, which is 151.6 kcal. The same sum is done for every nutrient, so the whole meal is simply the foods added up.

Example: A Breakfast Added Up

This example uses the values in our food database. Add the same three foods to the counter and you will see the same figures.

Each row is the food's value per 100g scaled to the amount shown, and the total is the rows added together. For a bigger plate, read our worked example with the Meal Builder.

Meal Calorie Counter or Calorie Tracker App?

A calorie tracker app logs everything you eat, day after day, and needs an account. This meal calorie counter, which also works as a meal calorie calculator, counts the foods in the meal you build, with no account and no download. Use it to check a plate before you eat it, work out a recipe, or compare two versions of the same meal. Tag foods as breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack if you want to count a whole day in one list. It does not keep a day-by-day diary. Save a meal you eat often as a template and it stays in your own browser. To set a daily target to compare against, use the BMR Calculator, the TDEE Calculator or the Macro Calculator.

Counting Calories in a Recipe, Per Serving

If you are cooking a dish for several people, add every ingredient with its full weight, then enter how many people the dish serves in the Serves box. The breakdown then shows a Per Serving column next to the Total. For example, a meal of 438 kcal that serves 2 is 219 kcal per serving. Weigh the finished dish and divide it up evenly if you want the per serving figure to be accurate.

Carbohydrate Portions

The Full Breakdown also shows the meal's carbohydrate as carbohydrate portions, where one portion is 10g of carbohydrate. Diabetes UK says one portion is usually equal to 10g of carbohydrate (Diabetes UK, Learn about carb counting). To count a meal in 10g portions or 15g exchanges, with the grams of each food that make one portion, use our Food Exchange Calculator.

Getting the Weights Right

Cooking changes weight. 100g of cooked rice has far fewer calories than 100g of dry rice because it has absorbed water, so weigh each food in the state our data describes, which is shown in its name, for example cooked or dry. If a food is not in the list in the state you eat it, search for a different entry for the same food. To swap one food for another at the same calories, use our Food Swap Calculator.

When a Food Has No Fibre Value

Some foods in the database do not have a fibre figure. The counter shows a dash for fibre instead of a made-up number, so a missing value is never counted as zero.

How Much of Your Day Is a Meal?

For context, the NHS says an average woman needs about 2,000 kcal a day and an average man about 2,500 kcal a day, and that your own needs could differ based on your age, weight, height and how much exercise you do (NHS, Understanding calories). They are averages, not a target for you. To work out a figure that fits you, use the Food Calorie Calculator or the Macro Calculator.