Cooked Spinach Nutrition Facts for Recipe Planning

Cooked spinach can disappear into a soup, filling, or pasta sauce so easily that it becomes difficult to judge how much ended up on each plate. A clearly measured ingredient portion makes recipe planning more transparent. This card focuses on plain spinach that has been boiled, drained, and prepared without salt. It describes the vegetable itself, before butter, cheese, cream, or other ingredients enter the dish. For a half-cup serving weighing 90 grams, the USDA FoodData Central reference provides approximately 21 calories, 2.7 grams of protein, and 2.2 grams of dietary fiber. These amounts come from the same cooked-spinach entry and have been scaled to the same portion. Calories are rounded to a whole number, while protein and fiber are rounded to one decimal place. They are reference estimates, rather than a laboratory measurement of your particular pan. The cooked and drained description matters. Raw leaves take up much more space, so a cup of loose raw spinach cannot stand in for a cup of cooked spinach. Squeezing cooked leaves very firmly also changes how much moisture remains and how densely the measuring cup fills. For closer consistency with the card, use the stated weight of the edible cooked vegetable instead of estimating from a bag of raw leaves. In a recipe, spinach can contribute texture, color, and a mild vegetable flavor. Fold it into an egg dish, stir it into soup, or combine it with beans and grains. Those suggestions are serving ideas, not recipes with calculated nutrition totals. Each additional ingredient contributes its own nutrients, and the complete dish needs its own calculation if you want to describe the whole serving accurately. A practical approach is to record the cooked spinach weight before combining ingredients. Then record the other ingredients and the finished recipe yield. If the dish is divided evenly, its total nutrients can be allocated across the actual number of portions. If the portions differ, weighing the finished servings provides a clearer picture than assuming every bowl contains the same amount. Avoid applying this vegetable-only number to a casserole or creamy dip. For packaged frozen spinach, inspect the product label and preparation instructions. A plain product may be useful for this kind of recipe planning, but a seasoned or sauced product has a different composition. Match the food entry to what you actually use, including whether it is measured frozen, drained, or fully prepared. The useful takeaway is simple: identify the preparation, measure the portion, and keep ingredient nutrition separate from meal nutrition. Spinach can fit into many eating patterns without needing to be described as a special weight-loss food. Source: USDA FoodData Central, spinach, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt, FDC 168463. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/food-details/168463/nutrients #SpinachNutrition #HealthyRecipes #ServingSize #NutritionFacts