How much is 100 calories?

by Leilehua Yuen
Sunday, 8 May 2022

So many of us are trying to watch our calories these days, but packaging does not always make that easy.

In big, bold letters the package might say, “SIX SERVINGS!” But if I divide it into six servings, each of us gets one potato chip. Another product might be packaged in a way that looks like a single serving, and the big bold print says “400 calories” but after I drank it, while idly reading the bottle I read the fine print. “2.4 servings.” It is each SERVING that has has 400 calories! I had drunk 960 calories in one fell swoop!

It’s easy to think “one little treat can’t have that many calories.” Did you know that one biscotti has 170 calories? I didn’t until I found that I piled the pounds on when I was having one biscotti each morning with my mid-morning coffee.

So, I decided to add this page to The Questing Feast. It is simply snapshots of what 100 calories looks like in foods that I come across in my daily life.

Geraldine was a huge advocate of healthy eating, and in her later years found a way to manage her weight that supported her health. Doctors were astonished at how active and fit she remained, even after lung cancer had metastasized through her body.

Today is Mother’s Day, and tomorrow is Geraldine’s birthday. In her honor I create this page in the hope of adding a tool to help us have awareness of exactly what we are putting into our bodies.

The 100 calories is approximate, and just offered as a way to visualize what we are actually consuming.