Lentil calories: nutrition, weighed portions and preparation

How many calories does lentil contain?

For the numbers in this guide, lentil means “Lentils, mature seeds, cooked, boiled, without salt” (USDA FoodData Central 172421). It contains 116 kcal per 100 g edible portion. The selected lentils are boiled without salt. Dry lentils, lentil soup and prepared lentil patties are different foods. Keeping that definition attached to the number prevents a plain ingredient from being mistaken for a prepared meal.

A weighed 150 g portion provides approximately 174 kcal: 150 × 116 ÷ 100. A smaller 75 g portion gives 87 kcal, while 225 g gives 261 kcal. These are calculated amounts of the named food, not claims about the weight of a standard piece, cup or restaurant serving.

What comes with those calories?

The same 100 g reference provides 9 g protein, 20.1 g total carbohydrate, 0.4 g fat and 7.9 g fiber. For the illustrated 150 g portion, those amounts become 13.5 g protein, 30.1 g carbohydrate, 0.6 g fat and 11.8 g fiber. Calories and individual nutrients describe different parts of the food, so keep all of them on the same portion basis when reading the table.

The selected lentils are boiled without salt. Dry lentils absorb water during cooking, so a dry ingredient weight is not interchangeable with the same gram amount of cooked lentils.

Weighing lentil without guessing a serving

Use the drained cooked weight for this reference. For soup, calculate the recipe yield rather than treating broth as cooked lentil weight. A useful kitchen sequence is to place an empty bowl on the scale, tare it to zero, add the edible lentil, and note the grams before combining it with other foods. If you serve only part of that amount, record the part eaten. Leftovers matter because the amount available and the amount consumed are different quantities.

A lentil salad can be recorded from drained cooked lentils and its other ingredients. Lentil soup needs its complete batch yield, particularly when much of the bowl is broth rather than lentils.

What changes in a complete dish?

A lentil patty may contain oil, breadcrumbs or other binders. Count those ingredients as part of the recipe instead of treating the cooked patty weight as plain boiled lentil weight.

Oil, coconut milk and meat change the finished recipe. Water absorption makes dry-to-cooked weight matching especially important.

For an explicit ingredient example, 150 g of the named lentil plus 5 g olive oil gives approximately 218.2 kcal. The lentil contributes 174 kcal and the oil contributes 44.2 kcal. This is an illustrative two-ingredient calculation, not a tested recipe or a claim that lentil is always served with oil.

How lentil compares with cooked chickpea

The comparison food is “Chickpeas (garbanzo beans, bengal gram), mature seeds, cooked, boiled, without salt” (FDC 173757), which contains 164 kcal per 100 g. At equal 150 g weights, the lentil reference supplies 174 kcal and cooked chickpea supplies 246 kcal: a difference of 72 kcal. That is a calculation for these records, not a universal ranking of foods or an instruction to exchange equal portions.

Compare the nutrients as well as the energy in the named records below. A food with a different water content, texture or role in the meal may not be a direct substitute. For a real swap, compare the amounts you plan to eat and include the rest of the plate, rather than choosing solely from the lower number in a 100 g table.

Recording the meal in BiteCal

In BiteCal, start with a photo of the lentil portion and the rest of the meal. Review the proposed food name, preparation, amount and visible additions before saving the calorie and macro estimate. If you already know the gram weight, use it as a check rather than accepting a visually plausible portion. A photo cannot establish a hidden oil quantity or replace the identity of a packaged product.

The nutrient figures come from USDA SR Legacy, final release April 2018. They provide a reproducible reference for the named food rather than a laboratory result for your own serving. Use the current package or restaurant information when it describes your exact product more closely. Rounding explains small differences between displayed portions; calculations here use the retained unrounded reference values.

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