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It's easy to get answers about health and nutrition! Just send your question by email to [email protected] and Dr. Harlan will respond to selected questions of general interest. Answers will be posted in the Ask Dr. Gourmet newsletter (sign up now!) and archived in the Ask Dr. Gourmet section of the website.

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Ask Dr. Gourmet

How do you calculate calories in a marinade?

I'm trying to calculate the calories in a recipe that has a marinade. Since you don't actually eat all of the marinade, how much of the calories are you supposed to count?

Dr. Gourmet Says...

Beef in a marinade

This is a great question and I don't think that it has an answer (well, not a very good answer at least).

I calculate calories and nutrition information for my recipes using a piece of software that draws its information from the USDA Nutrition Database (the gold standard for nutrition information). When I am working on a recipe that calls for a marinade, I assume that all of the marinade will be eaten and post those results - the worst case scenario, if you will. Obviously you might not actually consume all of the marinade, so this can lead to an overestimation of the nutrition information, but it's possible that some cooks brush the remaining marinade on the food as it cooks, so you might be consuming most of it.

If that worst case scenario calculation doesn't seem right to you, a good way for you to make the calculation on your own would be to calculate the calories for the marinade separately from what you are marinating (beef, pork, whatever). Estimate how much you actually use (perhaps subtract what is left in the pan from the total amount?) and only include that portion of the marinade in your overall counting of calories.

Thanks for writing,

Timothy S. Harlan, MD, FACP, CCMS
Dr. Gourmet