Pumpkin - How Many Calories?

Dietitian's Tips for Consuming Pumpkin

Raw pumpkin flesh is weighed after removing the rind, seeds and stem. The general reference provides 26 calories per 100 g of flesh, or 52 calories per weighed 200 g. Pumpkin dessert, oil-roasted pumpkin and pumpkin seeds need different calculations.

A portion of chopped pumpkin

A 200 g amount of raw flesh contains about 13 g carbohydrate, 5.52 g total sugars, 2 g protein and 1 g fibre. Fat is only 0.2 g. Low energy does not mean a large amount of protein or fibre. When pumpkin is the vegetable in a meal, the accompanying protein food and other ingredients still matter.

The reference lists 116 g for a US cup filled with roughly one-inch cubes. A different cup size or cut can give a different weight. Do not treat the purchased weight of an unpeeled pumpkin as edible flesh: remove the rind, stem and seeds, then weigh the part used.

Roasting, soup and sweet dishes

If a recipe starts with 200 g raw pumpkin, the pumpkin contributes about 52 calories. Its weight may fall as water is lost in the oven, so 100 g cooked pumpkin cannot automatically be assigned 26 calories. Boiling, draining and puréeing also affect the final weight. Cream in a soup and sugar in a dessert must be included with the other ingredients.

Measure the oil added to the tray to avoid counting only the vegetable. Pumpkin contains natural sugars even when no sugar is added; a sugar-free dessert claim cannot be evaluated without the rest of the recipe. Pumpkin seed kernels are a separate food. Their protein and fat figures do not describe the orange flesh.

Plain unsalted canned pumpkin purée is weighed ready to use, so its grams are not the same starting point as raw flesh. For homemade purée, record the raw pumpkin, added ingredients and final batch weight to calculate the amount in a spoonful or bowl.

Using the avocado-oil reference of 884 calories per 100 g, a weighed 5 g adds about 44 calories. Combined with 200 g raw pumpkin, the total is about 96 calories, assuming all the oil is eaten. Use the label for another oil and follow the bottle’s cooking instructions.

For pumpkin weighed after boiling and draining, 150 g provides 30 calories in its own reference. Keep that cooked portion separate from the raw ingredient weight in a recipe.

Raw-flesh reference

The calculation uses USDA SR28 record 11422, raw pumpkin; varieties can differ. It reports 340 mg potassium, 9 mg vitamin C and 426 µg RAE vitamin A per 100 g. The separate 8,513 IU vitamin A value was not substituted for the RAE figure. Vitamin values describe the raw food and are not assumed to remain unchanged after cooking.