How many calories are in a salad?
On this page
From about 40 calories for a plain side salad to over 700 for a cobb with the works. The leaves are almost nothing, about 8 calories a cup of romaine. The dressing, the cheese, the croutons and the protein set the total, so those are the parts to count.
People think of a salad as a low calorie food because lettuce is one. And lettuce really is almost free, with three cups of romaine at about 24 calories. But nobody eats three cups of plain romaine. The same bowl can be a 160 calorie side or a 770 calorie lunch, and the leaves are the same 24 calories in both.
What we’d do
Stop counting the leaves and count what goes on them. Measure the dressing with a real tablespoon a few times, since it’s the line that swings the most. And if the salad is your lunch, don’t aim for the smallest number. On a 2,000 calorie day over three meals, a meal runs about 500 to 830 calories, and a 160 calorie bowl at noon is how you end up hungry at three.
Lettuce works like an empty suitcase. It takes up most of the room and adds almost none of the weight, and what you pack in it decides the total.
The salads people order, with 2 tablespoons of dressing
| Salad | Calories | Protein | The biggest line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Side salad, ranch | 164 | 3 g | The ranch, 128 |
| With chicken, ranch | 325 | 32 g | The chicken, 140, then the ranch, 128 |
| Greek, oil and vinegar | 352 | 9 g | The dressing, 179 |
| Caesar, croutons and parmesan | 360 | 10 g | The dressing, 160 |
| Chicken salad, mayo, on greens | 364 | 29 g | The mayo, 198 |
| Cobb, ranch | 643 | 50 g | The chicken, then the ranch, cheddar and bacon |
| Taco, sour cream | 711 | 42 g | The ground beef, 231 |
Every row is built from USDA values, and each salad’s page breaks it down part by part at 1, 2 and 4 tablespoons of dressing. With a quarter cup of ranch, which is what a ladle or a 2 oz cup holds, the cobb comes to about 770.
Why the leaves barely count
Romaine is about 95% water. Gram for gram, olive oil has about 50 times its calories, so a tablespoon of olive oil (119 calories) has more than a whole head of romaine (about 106). The rest of the bowl falls somewhere between those two.
- Almost free. Romaine, spinach, cucumber, tomato and peppers come to 5 to 40 calories a cup.
- Pays its way. A palm of chicken (3 oz, 85 g) is 140 calories with 27 g of protein. Half a cup of chickpeas is 134 with 6 g of fiber. An egg is 78.
- Adds up fast. A tablespoon of ranch is 64 and caesar 80. An ounce of almonds is 164, croutons 130 and cheddar 114. Three slices of bacon are 109.
On a side salad with 2 tablespoons of ranch, the dressing is 78% of the calories. On a caesar with 3 tablespoons it’s over half.
Count yours
Tap your bowl into the bowl builder, with the dressing by the spoon. It gives the calories, the protein, the grade and the one change that would lift it most. To see what your dressing alone does, slide it from a teaspoon to a quarter cup on the pour.
Snap your salad, add how much dressing went on, and Gyroscope gives you the calories, protein and a grade in seconds. Track it.
5 sources
- Gebhardt and Thomas, Nutritive Value of Foods, Home and Garden Bulletin 72, USDA Agricultural Research Service, 2002ars.usda.gov
- USDA Standard Reference, lettuce, cos or romaine, rawnutritionvalue.org
- USDA Standard Reference, oil, salad or cooking, olivenutritionvalue.org
- USDA Standard Reference, salad dressing, regular, ranchnutritionvalue.org
- USDA Standard Reference, salad dressing, regular, caesarnutritionvalue.org
