Tom Yum calories is a search term that gets around 1,000 searches a month. That means 1,000 people are interested in learning about the calories in Tom Yum soup. Maybe the interest in this delicious soup in the United States with its calorie-conscious population is driving these searches. Calories, and particularly what provides them in food is a measure of the foods nutritional value. Many diet conscious consumers care about whether calories are from fat, carbohydrates or protein. Some are concerned over the relative ratios of carbohydrate to fat calories. Lets look into this issue through looking at a typical Tom Yum recipe.
Tom Yum Gai Soup Calories
Our research shows that a typical bowl of Tom Yum soup contains 143 calories. When you consider that a typical diet is 2,000 calories a day, enjoying a bowl of this soup does not cut into that total much. To look at this further, let’s look at a representative recipe from ingredients to soup and see what an average bowl contains:
- A pound of shrimp or chicken, cut into medium-sized pieces
- 1 ½ cup of mushrooms, sliced
- 4 to 5 tablespoons of fish sauce
- 7 to 8 thin slices of galangal
- ¼ cup chopped tomatoes
- 4-5 kaffir lime leaves
- 2 tablespoons (more or less than this, depending on your liking) red chilli peppers
- 4 shallots thinly sliced
- 7 to 8 tablespoons of lime juice
- 1 stalk of lemongrass (should be cut into half inch pieces)
- 1 tablespoon of chilli paste, in soy bean oil
- 1 cup of coriander/cilantro leaves (for garnishing)
- 3 cups of water
To prepare the soup, you should first take a medium-sized saucepan into which you have to put the water and brought it to the boil. To this add the lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves and cook for 2 minutes. After lowering the heat, add fish sauce, red chillies, shallots, galangal, chilli paste in soy bean oil and lime juice. Also add the mushrooms and tomatoes and cook until the flavor develops. Now add the shrimp or the chicken and keep a high heat, but do not stir. When the shrimp or chicken is done, heat for a further 2 minutes. Sprinkle the coriander/cilantro leaves on the top. Your Tom Yum soup is ready. You can serve it hot with rice. This recipe serves four people.
Calorie Analysis for Tom Yum Soup
Tom Yum soup made in this way contains 2.1 grams of fat, 5.7 grams of carbohydrates and 2.51 grams of protein per serving. The caloric content of fat, carbohydrate and protein are 9, 4, and 4 calories per gram. We see that in this bowl we have approximately 19 calories from fat, 23 calories from carbohydrates and 10 calories from protein. Using these numbers, we know that this is a low-calorie dish with approximately 40% of the calories coming from fat and 40% from carbohydrates.
If you are on a low-calorie diet, this is a very reasonable, tasty addition. Some diets stress low fat others low carbohydrates. It looks as if this would fit into either one because of the overall levels of fat and carbohydrate. It is very difficult to eat tasty food that does not have any calories from one of the three sources. To be sure you can emphasize one over the other, reducing fat or carbohydrates substantially, but even in a low carbohydrate diet, dieters consume 50 to 100 grams of carbohydrates a day. What better way to satisfy your taste-buds and not cut into your diet by getting a few Tom Yum calories.
