Calories in Juicing Recipes

by Matthew
(GA)

Q: Hello, How do I figure out how many calories are in the juice I am making?

Do you consume the same amount of calories from juicing that you would if you ate the fruit or vegetable whole?

Thank you for any info you can provide.

A: Hi Matthew! Calorie counts in juice is a common question for most people. It’s easier then it might seem, but there are some factors that make it challenging.

First of all, in most cases, for example in that of carrot or celery, 1 cup of juice provides the same amount of nutrients that would be in 5 cups of that veggie or fruit chopped up.

The pulp and fiber add just a minimal amount of calories and nutrients. Most of the nutrition is really in the juice - and the calories are really from the sugar.

It’s hard to get the exact calorie count for a few reasons:

1) All vegetables are different sizes
2) Juicer differences - Some juicers are better then others. The cheaper versions will leave the pulp wet. A wetter pulp means more juice was left in the pulp, and less in your cup, so less calories to count.


You can get an average of the calorie counts for your fresh juice by going to a reputable nutrition or calorie counting site like nutriondata.com.

There, you’ll want to find the calorie count (or nutrition data, if that’s what you are looking for, too) for each fruit or vegetable.
List out the calories for each fruit or veggie on a paper, taking note of the fiber content.

Add up the total calories.

Every gram of fiber has about 4 calories. So you’ll want to multiply the fiber grams by 4 calories for each piece of produce. Then, subtract that from the total amount of calories that were in all of the produce.

This will give you a pretty close estimate of the calorie counts for your juicing recipes.

Hope that helps you!