How Many Calories Are There In Pasta?
Our research has concluded that dried pasta contains approximately 350 calories and fresh pasta 250 calories. However, there are plenty of exceptions to this rule.
Most of the pasta in your local supermarket consists of just two ingredients. Dried pasta is made with semolina and water, while fresh pasta is made with flour and eggs. Yet despite this seeming simplicity, determining the number of calories in both kinds of pasta is more complicated than it might first appear.
Here, we're looking under the bonnet of both types of pasta to see which is better for you from a calorie perspective.
Calories in dried pasta
Unlike fresh pasta, where the egg quantity varies widely from brand to brand, most dried pasta contains virtually identical amounts of durum wheat and water. We studied ten packs of dried pasta to find out their [uncooked] calorie content, and although we expected them to be very similar, we didn't expect them to be this similar.
| Brand | Calories/100g |
| Garofalo | 351kcal |
| M&S | 351kcal |
| La Molisana | 351kcal |
| Mr Organic | 351kcal |
| De Cecco | 351kcal |
| Napolina | 356kcal |
| Rummo | 356kcal |
| Biona Organic | 358kcal |
| Barilla | 359kcal |
| Knorr | 359kcal |
| AVERAGE | 354kcal |
* All figures are accurate as of 29th September 2024.
A crucial note about dried pasta's weight
When calculating the number of calories in dried pasta, it's vital that you know whether the amounts shown on its label refer to its starting, uncooked weight, or its final, cooked weight.
It is so important to get the distinction right because the weight of dried pasta doubles as it cooks due to it absorbing water. If you weigh 100g of uncooked pasta and cook it, you'll sit down to enjoy around 200g of cooked pasta.
Thankfully, the nutritional information printed on most dried pasta refers to its uncooked weight. This means that when you cook it, even though the weight of the pasta will double, the calories will remain exactly as stated on the label.
Problems occur when pasta companies choose to print the pasta's calories as a cooked weight in a statement that usually looks like this:
"Typical values per 100g: 175kcal when cooked according to instructions."
The trouble is this statement is often printed in a tiny font. So, without reading the small print, you'd be forgiven for assuming that if you weigh 100g of this dried pasta and then cook it, you will sit down to eat 175 calories. In reality, you'll be sitting down to consume around 350 calories!
Based on an average of 354 calories per 100g of dried, uncooked pasta, the table below shows how many calories you will eat based on how much pasta you weigh.
| Dried pasta | Calories |
| 25g | 89kcal |
| 50g | 177kcal |
| 75g | 266kcal |
| 100g | 354kcal |
| 250g | 885kcal |
| 500g | 1770kcal |
| 1kg | 3540kcal |
Calories in fresh pasta
Calculating the calories you will consume when eating fresh pasta is equally tricky but for completely different reasons.
For a start, in the UK we mainly associate fresh pasta with filled pasta such as ravioli or tortellini. That means that when you buy pre-made ravioli, there's no way to tell how many calories are coming from the pasta and how many are coming from the filling.
As a comprehensive estimate, most fresh supermarket pasta will have been made with two parts flour to one part egg—the resulting pasta clocks in at approximately 150 calories per 100g. Because fresh pasta already contains a lot of moisture, it doesn't take on anywhere as much water as dried pasta does when it cooks. That's helpful when you're concerned with calories because the 100g start weight printed on the nutritional label will be similar to the weight of the pasta you will be sitting down to eat.
Although very few people pay much attention to nutritional labels, anyone following a low-calorie diet should because the calorie difference between fresh pasta from different brands is much wider than with dried pasta.
Although their sizes vary significantly, broadly speaking, an egg contains around 80 calories. Roughly 20% of these calories come from the egg white, while 80% come from the yolk. For this reason, specific diets recommend making fresh pasta with just the egg whites to reduce your calorie intake. You'll struggle to find this kind of pasta for sale in supermarkets simply because it is tasteless, has an unattractive colour, and has an unappealing, gluey texture.
What you find in most supermarkets is pasta made from flour and whole eggs. As your budget increases and you move towards the kind of fresh pasta sold in delicatessens, you tend to find that the pasta has been made with a higher percentage of egg yolk because this gives the dough a stunning colour and rich, luxurious taste. Go up to the most expensive level and look at pasta served in Italian restaurants or farmer's markets, and you'll be able to find pasta that has been made entirely with egg yolks and no egg white. This creates the most decadent and calorie-laden pasta money can buy (although many people find the eggy flavour overbearing).
To prove the point, we looked at the calories in some unfilled fresh pasta, and sure enough, as the price of the product increases, so too do the calories.
| Product |
Price |
Calories per 100g |
| Sainsbury's Tagliatelle |
£1.25 | 126kcal |
| M&S Penne |
£1.50 | 147kcal |
| Dell' Ugo Fusilli |
£6.25 | 163kcal |
| Maffei Orecchiette |
£6.50 | 273kcal |
| Pasta Evangelists Rigatoni |
£12 | 274kcal |
| La Tua Pasta Paccheri |
£15 | 280kcal |
| The Fresh Pasta Co. Tagiolini |
£15.20 | 283kcal |
| Petrossian Fettuccine |
£32 | 365kcal |
| AVERAGE | £11.21 | 234kcal |
* All figures are accurate as of 29th September 2024.
As you can see, Petrossian's fettuccine has almost three times the calories of Sainsbury's tagliatelle, emphasising the importance of reading and understanding nutritional labels if you follow a calorie-controlled diet.
Just like we did with dried pasta, we've taken the average amount of calories in fresh pasta and worked out roughly how many you will consume based on the number of grams you will ultimately eat.
| Fresh pasta | Calories |
| 25g | 58kcal |
| 50g | 117kcal |
| 75g | 175kcal |
| 100g | 234kcal |
| 250g | 585kcal |
| 500g | 1170kcal |
| 1kg | 2340kcal |
Why dried pasta is more calorific than fresh pasta
So, hang on. Are you saying that 100g of cooked, fresh pasta contains fewer calories than the same amount of dried pasta? How is that possible? Surely pasta made from flour and water can't be higher in calories than pasta made from flour and eggs?
The reason this is true is all down to the carbohydrate content of both types of pasta. Yes, fresh pasta is made with eggs, which are 10% fat, but eggs contain just 1% carbohydrate. In addition, because eggs are a significant part of fresh pasta's weight, much less flour is used to make it, meaning its carbohydrate concentration is significantly less than that of dried pasta.
Although dried pasta typically contains less than 0.5% fat, it has a much higher concentration of carbohydrates than fresh pasta, and carbohydrates are, sadly, very calorific.