Calories in Meat Loaf

Mom's meatloaf is delicious and you may think it is adding pounds to your hips. However meatloaf doesn't have as many calories as you may think, especially if made with turkey.

A sliced meatloaf on a cutting board. (Image: bhofack2/iStock/Getty Images)

Features

Meatloaf is primarily made with meat, eggs, bread crumbs, diced vegetables and seasoning. Seasonings and diced vegetables add negligible amounts of calories; one egg adds 70 calories to the entire loaf as does the bread crumbs. The true difference in calories comes from what type of meat you are using, the cut of beef, ground turkey or chicken.

Types

The least expensive and most common package of ground beef and is 80 percent lean, but 1 pound of this contains 1,152 calories, which makes a 4 ounce serving of meatloaf roughly 350 calories, depending on what extras are in the meatloaf mix. If you really enjoy beef, a better choice is 90 percent ground beef. One pound of 90 percent lean ground beef is 700 calories, making a 4 ounce serving of meatloaf about 225 calories.

Considerations

Perdue Fresh Ground Chicken is surprisingly higher in calories than the lean beef with 1 pound equaling 906 calories. So a 4 ounce serving of meatloaf being 275 calories. The lowest calorie choice is ground turkey. One pound is 640 calories and a 4 ounce serving of meatloaf is less than 200 calories.