Cooking oil calorie calculator

A photo shows the food on the plate, not the oil it was cooked in. That oil is dense energy: one level tablespoon of olive oil weighs 13.5 g and carries about 119 kcal, according to USDA FoodData Central. This calculator turns what you put in the pan, minus what was left, into calories per portion, and adds the sauces and dressings you put on your own plate.

How it works

1. What went into the dish. The amount you put in the pan, minus anything you measured as left over afterwards. Leave "left in the pan" empty and all of it counts, which gives the higher estimate.
2. From spoons to grams. A level US tablespoon of each fat has a weight that USDA lists: 13.5 g of olive oil, 14.2 g of butter, 12.8 g of lard. Millilitres use each fat's density from USDA's cup weight.
3. From grams to kcal. Grams × kcal per 100 g ÷ 100, with the USDA value for that fat: 884 kcal per 100 g for olive, sunflower and rapeseed oil, 717 for unsalted butter, which is about 16% water.
4. Shared out. The dish's total is divided by the number of portions. Extras from the table belong to your plate alone, so they are added in full.

The spoon table above lists every fat in the calculator.

A worked example

Three tablespoons of olive oil go into the pan and one is left at the end, so 2 tablespoons stay in the food: 2 × 13.5 g = 27 g, and 27 × 884 ÷ 100 = 238.7 kcal for the whole dish. Split four ways, that is 59.7 kcal per portion. One tablespoon of mayonnaise on your plate adds 13.8 g × 680 ÷ 100 = 93.8 kcal. Your portion gets 59.7 + 93.8 = 153.5 kcal on top of what the photo shows, which the calculator rounds to 154 kcal.

Deep frying and shallow frying

The same subtraction works for deep frying. Measure or weigh the oil in the pot before you start, let it cool after frying, and measure it again. The difference went into the food, with a little left on the basket and the kitchen paper. The calculator counts all of it as eaten, so the figure leans high rather than low.

How much oil a food takes up depends on the food, its coating, the temperature and the time, so a single "absorption percentage" is a guess. Measuring your own pan is the only way to know.

Tablespoons are not all the same

The calculator uses level US spoons: a tablespoon is 14.79 ml and a teaspoon 4.93 ml (NIST). Many metric spoons hold 15 ml. If yours does, choose millilitres and enter 15 for each spoonful. A heaped spoon holds noticeably more than a level one.

What it can't tell you

It trusts the amounts you enter, and it can't see oil that was already in a bought ingredient, such as tuna in oil or a ready-made sauce. For those, use the label with the nutrition label calculator. It is an estimate from USDA averages, not a measurement of your dish.

How many calories are in a tablespoon of olive oil?

About 119 kcal. USDA lists a level US tablespoon at 13.5 g and olive oil at 884 kcal per 100 g, so 13.5 × 884 ÷ 100 = 119.3 kcal. Sunflower and rapeseed oil are within a few kcal of it.

Does all the oil in the pan end up in the food?

Not always. Some stays in the pan, on the spoon or on kitchen paper. Measure what is left and enter it, and the calculator subtracts it. If you can't measure it, leave the field empty for the higher estimate.

Is butter lower in calories than oil?

Gram for gram, yes: 717 kcal per 100 g against 884 for oil, because butter is about 16% water. A level tablespoon of butter weighs a little more, 14.2 g, and carries about 102 kcal against about 119 for olive oil.

Sources

• USDA FoodData Central, SR Legacy: olive oil, sunflower oil, unsalted butter, lard and mayonnaise. Every other fat and extra in the calculator is from the same database, with its record number in the tool's data.
• NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.9: the volume of a US tablespoon, teaspoon and cup.

For a whole dish, the oil is one of the ingredients: see how to count calories in homemade food, then split the total with the recipe calculator.