Food Calories by Country
Thai food has a reputation for being light, and some of it is. Som tam, tom yum and a plate of grilled moo ping are honest food. But pad thai is fried in a lot of oil, the curries are built on coconut cream, and a mango sticky rice is a full meal pretending to be dessert. This page ranks the street stall, food court and restaurant dishes people actually order, lightest to heaviest inside each category.
Calorie figures come from the Thai Bureau of Nutrition, the INMU food composition database and Thai hospital dietitian data, sized to a normal street portion. Click any dish for the macro breakdown, where the calories hide, and how to order it lighter.
There are 40 dishes ranked on this page. The lightest is Moo Ping at 130 kcal per 1 skewer, the heaviest is Khao Soi at 700 kcal per 1 bowl, and the average lands around 387 calories a serving. 11 of them come in under 300 calories, and 4 are 600 or more.
That spread is the whole point. Two dishes off the same menu can be 570 calories apart, which is more than most people's entire daily deficit. Knowing which is which costs you nothing and changes the outcome.
Calorie and macro figures are estimates for a typical street stall or food court serving, based on the Thai Bureau of Nutrition and INMU Mahidol food composition data, plus Thai hospital dietitian figures for standard street portions. Actual numbers vary by stall, recipe and portion size. Use them as a guide, not gospel.
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