Even when we are on a diet and trying to cut down our daily calories, all of us are prone to snacking on the odd cookie here or there, and none are as scrumptious and delightful to taste as chocolate chip cookies.
With such a wide variety to choose from, chocolate chip cookies are the most popular cookies in the world and for good reason, however while we can assume that the odd cookie now and again won’t add on any weight, how many calories really are in chocolate chip cookies?
Keep reading to find out.
Calories In Different Types Of Chocolate Chip Cookies
While all types of chocolate chip cookies will use a variation of either milk chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate or angular chocolate chunks to give them their familiar crunchy taste, there are a few different kinds of chocolate chip cookies that incorporate different ingredients and flavors that can vary in their calorie count.
Commercial Chocolate Chip Cookies
Regular chocolate chip cookies that you can buy from any food store usually contain the regular ingredients needed to make cookies including white four, sugar, salt and chocolate pieces, but can often have some added ingredients with other sweeteners and saturated mixtures to make it as tasty as possible.
These types of cookies contain on average 220 calories per serving with each cookie containing 11g of fat which is 17% of the recommended daily amount.
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
When it comes to making the cookies yourself, one way to give the cookies and incredibly unique yet familiar taste is by adding in some peanut butter into the mix and while this might sound like a recipe for disaster in terms of weight loss, these cookies are actually lower in calories than commercial cookies containing 208 calories and 9g of fat.
Walnut Chocolate Chip Cookies
If you are a big fan of nuts and want to add some walnuts to a chocolate cookie to give it a mild and buttery flavor that compliments the chocolate, these cookies will contain even fewer calories at 198 per cookie.
This is primarily because while walnuts contain fat, rather than saturated fats which can be harmful to the body and puts on weight, they contain a range of polyunsaturated fats while also containing a high amount of Omega-3 fatty acids which are both far healthier.
Pumpkin Spiced Chocolate Chip Cookies
If you’re looking for an extremely low-calorie chocolate chip option that adds a tremendous amount of flavor and unique spices to this crunchy snack which is also the perfect appetizer for the fall months, chocolate chip cookies that are fused with a mixture of pumpkin spice only contain 120 calories per cookie, making them some of the healthiest types of chocolate chip cookies you can make.
The main reason for this is that these cookies incorporate canned pumpkins into the mixture which are incredibly healthy in their own right, being packed with beneficial nutrients including potassium, Vitamin A and iron.
Can You Put On Weight By Eating Chocolate Chip Cookies?
Because they contain chocolate and are made with a mixture of ingredients that spike their calorie level up by a moderate amount, such as with white flour, the effects of chocolate chip cookies really does depend on how much you eat in a single day rather than eating 1 on its own.
If you find that you start having a craving for a chocolate chip cookie, while they do contain moderate levels of fat depending on the type you choose they are considered moderate to fairly low in calories when compared to a lot of other foods so having the odd cookie here or there is completely fine as long as you continue with your regular healthy diet.
The real problem comes if you eat multiple in one day as this can cause your daily calorie intake to balloon to a point where it interrupts your regular diet plan.
A pack of 5 cookies from the store for example contain more than 1000 calories altogether, so if you do enjoy chocolate cookies always try to avoid binging them and space them out a few days apart from each other, or treat them as an occasional reward.
Are Chocolate Chip Cookies Considered A Healthy Snack?
Because they lack many of the beneficial nutrients our body needs to remain energized and healthy, chocolate chip cookies are not recognized as a very healthy snack, however they are a lot better than a lot of other small treats that are just as popular such as donuts.
To give donuts the unique flavor that we all know them for, they are packed with extremely high amounts of sugar and are more often than not also glazed in chocolate which makes them even more unhealthy and adds on far more calories than are seen in cookies.
This is also the case with sugar cookies which are another popular appetizing snack that may seem harmless on the body, however each singular cookie contains 430 calories due to their extremely high sugar content and the mixture of ingredients used to make them, which means that when even just a handful are eaten, it can cause a calorie count to grow out of control.
Therefore in comparison to many other snacks of a similar nature, chocolate chip cookies can actually be considered quite tame in terms of their amount of calories and can certainly be enjoyed as the occasional treat when you want to reward yourself or are just craving one or two crunchy or soft chocolate cookies.
Summary
You may be surprised to find out that chocolate chip cookies, in majority of their different kinds and flavors, are fairly generous when it comes to how many calories they have, just be sure to not overindulge on them in one day to avoid consuming too many calories all at once and treat them more as a reward or mid-week treat which will make them even more enjoyable while cutting down the calorie content.
