A cup of raw chopped broccoli contains about 31 calories. That makes it one of the lowest-calorie vegetables you can eat, with nearly all of its weight coming from water and fiber rather than sugars or starch.
Calories by Serving Size
The exact number depends on how much broccoli you’re working with and whether it’s raw or cooked. Here’s what the common portions look like for raw broccoli:
- 1 cup chopped (about 91 g): 31 calories
- 100 grams: roughly 34 calories
- 1 medium stalk (about 150 g): roughly 50 calories
For context, you could eat three full cups of raw broccoli and still take in fewer calories than a single medium banana.
How Cooking Changes the Count
Cooking broccoli concentrates its calories because heat drives off water and softens the cell walls, letting the florets shrink. A cup of boiled, drained broccoli comes in at about 55 calories, nearly double the 31 calories in a raw cup. The broccoli itself hasn’t gained energy. You’re simply fitting more actual vegetable into the same measuring cup once it wilts down.
Steaming produces a similar result. Roasting pushes the number higher still, because most people toss broccoli with oil before it goes in the oven. A single tablespoon of olive oil adds about 120 calories to the whole sheet pan, so a typical roasted serving lands somewhere around 50 to 80 calories depending on how generous you are with the oil. If you’re tracking calories closely, measuring your cooking fat matters more than worrying about the broccoli itself.
What Else You Get for Those Calories
Broccoli is worth eating for reasons that go well beyond its low calorie count. A single cup of raw broccoli delivers 81 milligrams of vitamin C, which covers about 90% of the daily value. It also provides 93 micrograms of vitamin K, roughly 78% of what you need in a day. Vitamin K plays a key role in blood clotting and bone metabolism, and most people don’t think about it until they’re told they’re low.
Fat content is negligible: 0.34 grams in a raw cup, 0.64 grams once boiled. Protein sits around 2.5 grams per cup, which is modest but higher than many vegetables. The fiber content, about 2.4 grams per raw cup, helps explain why broccoli feels filling relative to its calorie load. Fiber slows digestion and adds bulk without contributing usable energy.
Why Broccoli Works for Weight Management
Nutritionists sometimes talk about “calorie density,” which is just the number of calories packed into a given weight of food. Broccoli’s calorie density is extremely low, around 34 calories per 100 grams. Compare that to cooked rice at roughly 130 calories per 100 grams or chicken breast at about 165. Swapping a portion of a calorie-dense side for broccoli is one of the simplest ways to lower the total energy of a meal without reducing the physical volume of food on your plate. You eat the same amount by weight, feel comparably full, and take in far fewer calories.
This works especially well at dinner, where portion sizes tend to creep up. Loading half the plate with steamed or roasted broccoli and keeping the protein and starch portions moderate is a practical strategy that doesn’t require counting anything precisely.