Okay, so I got curious the other day about avocados. Specifically, the small ones. I eat them quite a bit, usually just half at a time, but sometimes a whole small one if I’m feeling it. But then I thought, wait a minute, how many calories am I actually eating here?
My Little Investigation
So, I decided to figure it out myself, not just rely on some random number I saw somewhere once. You know how it is, numbers get thrown around, but what does ‘small’ even mean?
First thing, I grabbed one of those Hass avocados from my fruit bowl. It definitely looked small compared to the others I sometimes buy. Felt like maybe 150 grams, pit and skin included? Just a guess.
Then, I actually got out my kitchen scale. Yeah, I went there. I weighed the little guy whole. It came in at 148 grams. Close guess, huh?
But that’s the whole thing, right? You don’t eat the skin or the big seed inside. So, the next step was obvious:
- I carefully cut it open.
- Scooped out the green stuff into a bowl.
- Weighed the empty skin halves and the pit together.
The skin and pit weighed about 45 grams. So, simple math: 148 grams (total) minus 45 grams (waste) equals 103 grams of actual avocado flesh. That’s what I’m eating.
Looking Up The Numbers
Okay, now I had a weight for the edible part: 103 grams. Time to find the calorie count per gram. I didn’t just trust the first number I found online. I poked around a few different food databases and nutrition sites. Most seemed to agree, roughly.
The general idea I got was avocado flesh is somewhere around 1.6 to 2 calories per gram. It varies a bit, maybe depending on ripeness or the specific type, who knows.
So, let’s calculate based on my 103 grams:
- 103 grams 1.6 calories/gram = 164.8 calories
- 103 grams 2.0 calories/gram = 206 calories
So, What’s the Verdict?
Based on my little experiment with that specific avocado, the calorie count for that ‘small’ one was somewhere between 165 and 206 calories. That sounds about right. It’s not super low, but considering all the good fats and stuff, it feels reasonable for what you get.
Of course, ‘small’ is subjective. Another avocado might be 120g total, or 160g total, and the pit size varies too. So this isn’t a hard and fast number for every small avocado. But doing it this way, actually weighing the part I eat, gave me a much better real-world idea than just guessing based on a label that says ‘small avocado’. It was kinda interesting to see the actual process through.
