How to *you* count calories for pickles?

[blythe]

I love pickles of all kinds (sugar free gherkins, kosher dills, pickled okra, and pickles that aren't really pickles, like roasted bell peppers in jars). All of these items claim to be 0 calories. But how can that be? A pepper isn't 0 calories, so why would a roasted bell pepper in a jar be 0 calories?

I don't know how to record them. What do you do? Record the 0, or record the calorie count for the cucumber, pepper, okra, whatever it used to be before it was "pickled?"

[JennaLore]

I just checked and my bottles of pickles/pickled things do not say zero cals. So, I donno if you are using different brands etc, but as far as I know you cannot erase the calories in a veggie by putting it in brine, or else I'd be pickling everything :P

[wingspan]

The sugar free gherkin ones are made with Splenda so they claim to be 0 cals because the juice is made with Splenda.

[icicle]

As a general rule, I record them as 5 kcal per pickle (small gherkins in my case). I don't recall jars ever saying 0 kcals on any I've bought, but in the US, the rules are that if it's <5, they're allowed say 0. Here, labels tend to be much more accurate.

[blythe]

Ah, that's the problem - I live in the wrong country!

I think I'll keep recording them as the vegetable they "used to be."

Thanks all!

[shayyy333]

FDA rule is that any item who's serving size yields less than 5 calories can post it as zero. They consider it not significant. Like splenda has about 1calorie per packet. A small pickle is like 3. Butter spray? .8 calories per spray.

[raspberrybutterscotch]

Wow, that sucks for pedantic anorexics. I'm glad I don't live in America.

[MuffinTop]

Hopefully I'm not butting in or bringing up something that has long been dead, but many brands of pickles only /have/ to count the calories in the brine because a cucumber is listed as a "negative calorie food". This simply means that it takes more calories for your body to digest it than the cucumber actually gives you nutritionally. So while --as JennaLore said--you cannot erase the calories in something simply by dunking it in brine, this also doesn't change the fact that it still takes your body that same amount of energy to physically break down the cucumber and the cucumber isn't going to give you any more calories than it would have before.

Granted, this is just my own speculation, but it has been fed by many a year of studying negative calorie foods and negative calorie diets. I do not claim to be an expert and my information may be wrong, but I don't think it is. The only calories that might be in a pickle would be from anything added into the brine that might add calories, such as sugar :)

This info only goes for cucumbers, obviously, not pickled bell peppers.