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My name is Christine Marquette and I'm a registered and licensed dietitian with the Austin Regional
Clinic and I've been asked how many calories are in a potato. That can vary a lot depending
on the size of the potato. If it's a very small potato say a potato about that big,
for example potatoes you would buy in a bag, say a five pound bag of potatoes, those are
usually pretty small potatoes. You're going to get about eighty to a hundred calories
in that size of a potato. If it's a very small, say for example a very small red potato or
a very small white potato, you may be only getting about fifty calories from that little
small potato. Now if it's a large baked potato, you're going to have a wide range of calorie
level, just depending on how big that potato is. If it's an average baked potato that's
about that big, you're going to be getting at least two hundred calories, just plain,
without anything else added to it. No butter, no sour cream, just the plain old baked potato.
Now once you start adding things to it, sour cream, cheese, bacon, whatever you want to
add to your baked potato, that's going to be adding a lot more calories. And if you
would go to a restaurant that had extra large potatoes it's going to be even more calories,
so if you're going to get a potato at a restaurant, the best thing to do is actually check their
nutrition information, a lot of times they have it available in the restaurant, or they
may actually have it available online so you could check their website before you go to
the restaurant and actually find out how many calories are in that potato that you want
to eat. Also if it's not a baked potato, if it's French fries, most of the fast food places
do have their nutrition information available online so it's very easy to see how many calories
you're going to get in a small order of fries versus an extra large order of fries. So you
can find that information all available online for each particular restaurant, and that's
probably the best way to know exactly how many calories you're getting from a potato,
depending on how it's made.