Foods Lowest in Calories: A Ranked List

Calorie density is a genuinely useful number when you’re trying to eat a larger volume of food for fewer calories — a common goal for weight management without feeling like you’re eating less. Below is a data-backed ranking of the foods in our database with the fewest calories per 100 g.

Foods ranked by Calories per 100 g edible portion
#	Food	Calories
1	Coffee	1 kcal
2	Green Tea	1 kcal
3	Cucumber	15.9 kcal
4	Celery	16.7 kcal
5	Courgette (Zucchini)	17 kcal
6	Tomato	18 kcal
7	White Mushrooms	22 kcal
8	Spinach	23 kcal
9	Cauliflower	27.6 kcal
10	Asparagus	28.1 kcal
11	Grapefruit	30 kcal
12	Watermelon	30 kcal
13	Red Bell Pepper	31.3 kcal
14	Cabbage	31.4 kcal
15	Broccoli	34 kcal
16	Skim Milk	34 kcal
17	Kale	35 kcal
18	Strawberries	36.4 kcal
19	Peach	39 kcal
20	Chilli Pepper	40 kcal
21	Green Beans	40 kcal
22	Carrot	41 kcal
23	Beetroot	43 kcal
24	Blackberries	43 kcal
25	Kefir	43 kcal

Unsurprisingly, this list is dominated by water-rich vegetables, unsweetened drinks and leafy greens — cucumber, celery and spinach among them. Low calorie density doesn’t mean low nutritional value: many of these foods are genuinely rich in vitamins, minerals and fibre, just delivered with a lot of water weight alongside.

Common questions

Is “low calorie” the same as “healthy”? Not automatically — a food can be low in calories and still offer little nutritionally. The foods ranked here are whole, minimally processed foods that happen to also be calorie-light, not ultra-processed diet products.

Why do some low-calorie foods still feel filling? Volume and water content play a big role — foods with high water and fibre content, like vegetables, tend to fill the stomach for relatively few calories, which is part of why they’re a mainstay of most weight-management approaches.

Nutrition values are USDA FoodData Central approximations — see our editorial approach for how we source and verify data.