Popcorn Nutrition Per 100g: Calories, Protein, Fibre Chart

Popcorn Nutritional Value Per 100 g

Here is the full chart for plain air-popped popcorn, with no oil, butter or salt. The first column is the one most people search for. The other two columns are the amounts you actually eat.

One cup of popped corn weighs about 8 g. That sounds tiny, but popcorn is mostly air. Cleveland Clinic lists two cups at 62 calories, which works out to the same 8 g per cup.

Source: USDA FoodData Central record 167959, "Snacks, popcorn, air-popped". The per-cup and per-30 g columns are worked out from that per-100 g data.

One thing to note. The corn kernel itself is not a magic food. Indian food tables put dry maize at 342 calories and 11 g protein per 100 g. Popping does not add nutrients. It just turns a hard grain into something light and crunchy.

How Many Calories in Popcorn? Per Cup, Per Bowl, Per 30 g

Weight is what confuses people here. A big bowl of popcorn looks like a lot of food. On a weighing scale it is barely a handful of grain.

These numbers are for plain air-popped corn. A "bowl" here means a medium serving bowl holding about three cups.

So a 100 g figure is a lab number, not a snack. To eat 100 g of popped corn you would have to finish more than 12 cups. Most people stop at three or four.

Ghee changes this fast. One teaspoon of ghee is about 5 g, and ghee is pure fat at 900 calories per 100 g. That single spoon adds roughly 45 calories to your bowl. Two spoons nearly double a 93-calorie bowl.

How Much Protein Is in Popcorn?

Popcorn has 12.9 g of protein per 100 g. That beats potato chips and brown-rice cakes. Per cup it is only about 1 g, and a full bowl gives you roughly 3 g.

Now the honest part. Popcorn protein is not high quality on its own. Maize protein is low in lysine and short of tryptophan, two of the building blocks your body cannot make. The FAO says so plainly in its maize nutrition report.

That is easy to fix at home. Eat popcorn with milk, curd, peanuts or roasted chana. Those foods carry the amino acids corn is missing. Wondering how it stacks up against the other Indian crunchy snack? We compare both in makhana vs popcorn.

Why Popcorn's Fibre Number Looks So High

Popcorn keeps its hull. That crunchy shell that gets stuck in your teeth is mostly insoluble fibre, which is why the whole grain scores 14.5 g per 100 g.

The USDA calls popcorn a whole grain, and notes that whole grains carry more fibre than refined ones like white bread or white rice.

Read that table by weight, not by meal. You might eat 40 g of oats at breakfast but only 24 g of popcorn in an evening. One bowl of popcorn gives about 3.5 g of fibre. A 45 g roti gives 4.4 g, so the bowl lands a little short of one roti.

A warning about Indian food tables here. ICMR-NIN lists maize at 3 g of fibre per 100 g, which looks like it contradicts the USDA. It does not. That older column measures crude fibre, a different lab test that counts far less of the plant material. Never compare the two numbers side by side.

How Oil, Butter and Ghee Change the Numbers

The kernel stays the same. What you cook it in does not. Here is the same 100 g of popcorn made three ways.

The jump is in the fat and the salt. A microwave bag carries almost ten times the fat of air-popped corn, and over a hundred times the sodium. The fibre and protein barely move.

That is the whole case for air-popping at home. You control the oil, so you control the only number that really changes.

Which Vitamins and Minerals Does Popcorn Have?

Popcorn carries B vitamins plus a useful set of minerals. Per 100 g it gives 144 mg magnesium, 358 mg phosphorus, 329 mg potassium, 3.19 mg iron and 3.08 mg zinc.

Scaled to a real bowl of 24 g, that is about 35 mg magnesium, 86 mg phosphorus and 0.8 mg iron. Small amounts, but they come attached to a snack of under 100 calories.

Popcorn also contains a polyphenol called ferulic acid. Cleveland Clinic says it may help with obesity and metabolic syndrome, but adds that this is preliminary research and human studies are still needed. Treat it as a bonus, not a reason to snack.

How Much Popcorn Can You Eat in a Day?

Three to four cups of air-popped corn is a sensible snack serving. That is 93 to 124 calories. One or two servings a day fits easily into most diets.

"Fiber is slower to digest, so it gives you a feeling of satiety," says Gillian Culbertson, a registered dietitian at Cleveland Clinic. "It's also low in calories if you choose types without added sugar, butter or oil."

One caution. A lot of fibre at once can cause gas or bloating if you are not used to it. Start with two cups and build up. If popcorn regularly upsets your stomach, read our piece on popcorn side effects.

Trying to lose weight? The portion maths matters more than the food. We work through it in popcorn for weight loss, and is popcorn healthy? covers the wider question.

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