High Density Foods for Healthy Eating and Weight Control

Low Calorie - High Density Foods

If recent studies suggesting that people tend to eat the same volume of food each day are borne out, low calorie - high density foods are a bonanza for anyone trying to reduce their caloric intake.

Calorie density is simply a measure of how many calories are packed into each (weight) unit of the food.

Low calorie- high density foods have fewer calories relative to their weight. "If you decrease the energy density of your diet, caloric intake will decline," says Barbara Rolls, professor of nutritional sciences at Pennsylvania State University and co-author along with Robert Barnett of The Volumetrics Eating Plan.

Robert Pritikin's updated plan found in his book, The Pritikin Principle: The Calorie Density Solution follows the same line of thought.

A low calorie - high density food plan features lower calorie fruits, vegetables like salad greens and broths. What these foods have in common is the magic diet ingredient, water.

Water has zero calories, so the more volume represented by water, the less room there is for calories. Water also creates a feeling of fullness, helping one to eat less.

Fiber is another key component of low calorie - high density foods. In this category, we again find many fruits and vegetables, as well as whole grains, such as whole wheat bread or pasta, whole grain cereals and brown rice.

A study at Tufts University in Boston found that increasing daily fiber intake by 14 grams resulted in a 10% decrease in total calorie intake and a weight loss averaging one pound a month. This is a very small diet change to make. Substitute about 28 calories of fiber for some high calorie density food you have been eating.

To calculate a food's caloric density, divide the total calories by the weight in ounces or grams.

For example, a 3.4 oz. bagel has 280 calories or a density of 82.35 calories per oz.

The following table illustrates calorie densities of a few common foods. Calculate your own using U.S. Department of Agriculture data in a nice searchable format here.

Foods in the low calorie - high density range up to 50 should be the focus of your long term eating plan. Densities between 50 and 100 are foods that can be eaten a few times a week. Foods over 100 should be eaten in very small amounts and infrequently.

Notice a couple of interesting things that calorie density reveals.

Remember how diets used to recommend toasted white bread over plain as if the toasting was burning away some of the calories? Well the data above reveals that the calories stay the same; it is the weight that changes.

So toasted bread, with some of the water toasted out, is a higher calorie density food.

We see the same thing with spaghetti cooked al dente vs. spaghetti cooked until softer.

The al dente has higher calorie density simply because it contains less water.

Spaghetti looks like a very good diet food on this scale, that's if you don't add a lot of meat or cheese. Soft cooked spaghetti has a density of 33.70 and the sauce is 16.21.

You might be surprised to see white meat chicken at the very max of the good range (46.20), but remember that proteins should comprise only 10 to 15% of your total food plan.

In that context, it's still a healthy choice. That illustrates a very important point for any healthy eating plan.

There are a lot of good tools out there, from calorie counters and calculators to the glycemic load food scale to the calorie density food scale.

And don't forget the USDA Food Pyramid (now pie chart) and the Mediterranean Food Pyramid. They all have valuable insights to contribute.

But at the end of the day, it's up to you the consumer, you the dieter, to decide how to incorporate any of them into your Eat Healthy for Life Plan.

What I'm suggesting is that none of them can stand alone. Each needs to be taken into context.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to be taken as medical advice.