400 Calories

This is a great visual of how foods that are high in fat provide a lot of calories but do not fill you up. Vegetables and beans, on the other hand, have fewer calories so you can eat more and get full.

Four hundred calories of oil (any oil - olive, corn, vegetable – all oils have the same number of calories) = 3 ½ tablespoons of oil. Would you drink 3 ½ tablespoons of oil? No, of course not. That is really gross, but guess how much oil is in that large order of French Fries from Burger King or McDonald's - 3 tablespoons!

Four hundred calories of chicken (boneless, skinless, white meat, roasted) = 8 ounces of chicken. How much is that? Three ounces of chicken is about the size of a deck of cards. Eight ounces would be the almost the same as three decks of cards. Remeber that frying chicken will add calories. Breaded and fried chicken? Try another 3 tablespoons of oil!

The specific amounts of spinach, eggplant and beans are not stated in the illustration so I looked at each one separately.

400 calories of raw spinach = 57 cups! You would be eating all day!
400 calories of cooked, boiled and drained spinach = 10 cups
400 calories of cooked, boiled, and drained eggplant = 12 cups
400 calories of canned beans (black, kidney, white) = approximately 2 cups depending on the type

As you can see, food with fewer calories such as vegetables, beans and chicken will allow you to eat more food for less calories. Foods that are higher in fat add a lot of calories without adding volume so you cannot eat very much of that food item.

*All calorie estimates taken from www.caloriecount.about.com.