How many calories in bamboo shoots?
One cup of sliced raw bamboo shoots, 151 g on the scale, is 41 calories, or 27 calories per 100 g. Boil that same cup and drain it and it lands at 14. Canned sliced shoots, drained, come to 25 calories a cup. The number moves with the pot, not with the vegetable.
You'd need to walk about 8 minutes to burn the 41 calories in a cup of sliced raw shoots (151 g).
How long does it take to burn off bamboo shoots?
A cup of sliced raw shoots (151 g) is 41 kcal. Enter your weight and the amount you ate to see how long it takes you to burn that off:
lb
| Activity | Time to burn 41 kcal |
|---|---|
| Walking, brisk | 8 min |
| Cycling, moderate | 5 min |
| Swimming, moderate | 6 min |
| Jogging | 5 min |
| Weight training, moderate | 9 min |
Times are for a 155 lb adult at a steady pace; change the weight to see yours. The amount is set to the portion in the text (151 g); change it to what you actually ate. BodyPal works this out from your steps automatically.
On this page
- Bamboo shoot quick facts
- US serving sizes, cup by cup
- Boiling cuts the calories by more than half
- Canned bamboo shoots, the version most Americans buy
- The sodium comes from the pot, not the can
- Stir-fried bamboo shoots and the oil in the pan
- How do bamboo shoots compare?
- Most popular bamboo shoots brands
- FAQ
Bamboo shoot quick facts
The reference row is fresh shoots, uncooked: SR Legacy 169210, "Bamboo shoots, raw". It is the only USDA record for the fresh vegetable, and unlike the boiled rows it carries a full profile down to total sugars. The serving column is a cup of half-inch slices, 151 g.
| Nutrient | Per 100 g | Per 1 cup sliced (151 g) | % Daily Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calories | 27 | 41 | — |
| Total fat | 0.3 g | 0.5 g | 1% |
| Saturated fat | 0.07 g | 0.1 g | 1% |
| Carbohydrate | 5.2 g | 7.9 g | 3% |
| Dietary fiber | 2.2 g | 3.3 g | 12% |
| Total sugars | 3 g | 4.5 g | — |
| Protein | 2.6 g | 3.9 g | 8% |
| Sodium | 4 mg | 6 mg | 0% |
| Potassium | 533 mg | 805 mg | 17% |
% Daily Value is based on a 2,000-calorie diet.
Verified nutrition data
Numbers on this page come from USDA FoodData Central, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food composition database, and from manufacturer labels where a branded product is named. Last verified September 2026. How we verify our data →
There is no added sugars line here, and that is not a gap in the data. Nothing gets added to a shoot cut out of the ground, so the 4.5 g of sugars in a cup is the plant's own, and this edition of SR Legacy reports no added sugars figure for any bamboo record.
Two rows carry the page. Fiber is 3.3 g in a cup, 12% of the FDA Daily Value of 28 g. Potassium is 805 mg, 17% of the day, from 41 calories. Very little else in the produce aisle hands back a sixth of the daily potassium for the price of 41 calories.
Protein is the quiet surprise. At 2.6 g per 100 g, raw bamboo shoots carry more protein per gram than bell peppers, kohlrabi or savoy cabbage, and a cup delivers 3.9 g — 8% of the day. It is a vegetable, not a protein source, but it is not the empty crunch people assume.
One thing the raw row does not describe is a food you would eat as it stands. Fresh shoots are boiled and drained before they reach the plate; the 27-calorie figure is the ingredient going into the pot. What comes out is the next section.
US serving sizes, cup by cup
| Serving | Weight | Calories |
|---|---|---|
| 1 oz raw | 28 g | 8 |
| ½ cup, ½" pieces | 76 g | 21 |
| 100 g | 100 g | 27 |
| 1 cup, ½" slices | 151 g | 41 |
A cup of sliced bamboo shoots weighs 151 g. That is worth sitting with for a second, because it is over five ounces — heavier than a cup of most sliced vegetables, since the pieces are dense, wet and stack flat with almost no air between them.
That weight is where food logs go sideways. The can in the pantry says "10 calories per ½ cup", so people log a cup of fresh sliced shoots as 20 and move on. The can is describing a drained, canned product at 115 g to the half cup; fresh shoots at 151 g to the full cup are a different food with a different number. The honest reading is 41.
Half a cup, 76 g, is the portion that actually shows up in cooking: a handful into fried rice, a few slices across a bowl of noodles. At 21 calories it is close to a rounding error in a day's total, which is the real argument for bamboo shoots. They add volume and crunch to a bowl without adding a meal.
Boiling cuts the calories by more than half
| Preparation | Per 100 g | Typical serving | Calories |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raw, sliced | 27 | 1 cup, ½" slices (151 g) | 41 |
| Boiled and drained, no salt | 12 | 1 cup, ½" slices (120 g) | 14 |
| Boiled and drained, with salt | 11 | 1 cup, ½" slices (120 g) | 13 |
| Canned, drained | 19 | 1 cup, ⅛" slices (131 g) | 25 |
| Cooked with added fat | 41 | 1 cup (155 g) | 64 |
Raw is 27 calories per 100 g. Boiled and drained is 12. That is a drop of more than half, and it happens because bamboo shoots go into boiling water and leave a good part of their sugars behind in it. Carbohydrate falls from 5.2 g to 1.92 g per 100 g and fiber from 2.2 g to 1 g on the same journey.
The serving numbers compound the effect. A cup of raw slices weighs 151 g; a cup of boiled slices weighs 120 g, because the pieces soften and pack tighter. Lower density, smaller cup, and the cup of shoots on your plate after cooking is 14 calories instead of 41. One whole boiled shoot, 144 g, is 17.
This is the number most people actually eat, and it is the one nearly every calorie chart gets wrong by quoting the raw row. If the shoots were boiled and drained before they hit the wok or the bowl, log 14 for a cup, not 41.
Canned bamboo shoots, the version most Americans buy
Fresh bamboo shoots are a specialty item in most of the country. The can is the default, and SR Legacy 169212, "Bamboo shoots, canned, drained solids", is the row that fits it: 19 calories per 100 g, 1.72 g protein, 3.22 g carbohydrate, 1.89 g sugars, 1.4 g fiber, 0.4 g fat.
- 1 cup, ⅛" slices (131 g): 25 calories
- 1 standard can, drained (262 g): 50 calories
- 1 oz (28 g): 5 calories
An entire can, drained, is 50 calories. Not a serving of it — the can.
Canning costs the shoots their best number, though. Potassium falls from 533 mg per 100 g in the fresh shoot to 80 mg in the canned drained solids, so the 17% Daily Value that made the fresh cup interesting drops to roughly 2%. Sugars fall too, from 3 g to 1.89 g. Water-packed canning leaches minerals into the liquid you pour down the sink.
Then there are the labels themselves. Retail cans of sliced bamboo shoots report anywhere from 9 to 31 calories per 100 g for what is, physically, the same product in the same water. Nothing sinister is going on: at these values, the rounding rules on a Nutrition Facts panel do most of the work, and a serving that lands under five calories may be declared as zero. For a can of shoots, USDA's 19 calories per 100 g is a steadier anchor than any single label on the shelf.
The sodium comes from the pot, not the can
Here is the inversion nobody expects from a canned vegetable.
- Fresh, raw: 4 mg of sodium per 100 g
- Canned, drained solids: 7 mg per 100 g, about 9 mg in a cup
- Boiled with salt, drained: 240 mg per 100 g
A cup of the salted boiled version, 120 g, carries 288 mg of sodium — 13% of the 2,300 mg Daily Value. One whole shoot boiled in salted water reaches 346 mg, or 15%. Meanwhile the drained can, the thing everyone assumes is the salty option, sits at single-digit milligrams.
So the salt in a bamboo shoot dish is almost entirely a cooking decision, plus whatever sauce arrives afterward. Drain and rinse the can and you are starting from near zero. Boil the shoots in salted water and you have spent an eighth of the day's sodium before the soy sauce is even open.
Calories move the opposite way. Boiling with salt gives 11 calories per 100 g against 12 without, a difference so small it is inside the noise of the measurement. You pay 288 mg of sodium to save one calorie a cup, which is the worst trade on this page.
Stir-fried bamboo shoots and the oil in the pan
USDA also carries a survey record for bamboo shoots as they get cooked in an American kitchen, and it reads 41 calories per 100 g — higher than raw. A cup of it, 155 g, is 64 calories.
The reason is in the fat column: 2.94 g per 100 g, against 0.22 g for boiled shoots. The shoots did not gain anything. The pan did. Almost the whole gap between a 12-calorie boiled shoot and a 41-calorie cooked one is oil that the pieces soaked up, which is the general rule for every low-calorie vegetable that meets a hot skillet.
That is not an argument against stir-frying. It is an argument for logging the oil rather than the vegetable: at 64 calories a cup, stir-fried bamboo shoots are still a light thing to put in a bowl, and the MyPlate vegetable group counts a cup of them the same way it counts anything else. Just know which of the two numbers you are eating.
How do bamboo shoots compare?
| Vegetable, raw | Per 100 g | US serving | Calories |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bamboo shoots | 27 | 1 cup sliced (151 g) | 41 |
| Kohlrabi | 27 | 1 cup (135 g) | 36 |
| Savoy cabbage | 27 | 1 cup shredded (70 g) | 19 |
| Mustard greens | 27 | 1 cup chopped (56 g) | 15 |
| Yellow bell pepper | 27 | 1 large pepper (186 g) | 50 |
Every row is 27 calories per 100 g. That is not a coincidence worth reading anything into — it is what a watery, low-starch vegetable weighs in energy — and it makes the point cleanly: per gram, these five are interchangeable. The whole spread from 15 to 50 calories comes from how many grams fit in the measure.
Our take: bamboo shoots are the heaviest cup on this list, so if you are counting cups rather than grams, they cost more than the leafy options. What you get for those extra calories is 2.6 g of protein per 100 g — more than kohlrabi, savoy cabbage or yellow bell pepper — and 805 mg of potassium in the cup. For sheer volume per calorie, shredded cabbage or chopped greens win outright. For a crunchy, filling addition that carries real potassium, the shoots are worth their 41.
And if calories are the only thing being watched, the boiled row settles it. Fourteen calories a cup is as close to free as a solid food gets, and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans would happily count it toward the day's vegetables.
Most popular bamboo shoots brands in the United States
Ranked by how widely each product appears among foods sold in the United States, from the BodyPal food database of over 3.3 million products. Calories are the figures printed on each Nutrition Facts label, checked against USDA FoodData Central.
| Product | Calories (per 100 g) |
|---|---|
| La Choy Fancy Sliced Bamboo Shoots | 9 cal |
| HT Traders Bamboo Shoots Slices | 31 cal |
| Asian Gourmet Sliced Bamboo Shoots | 14 cal |
| Asian Best Sliced Bamboo Shoots in Water | 23 cal |
| China Sea Sliced Bamboo Shoots | 19 cal |
| Roland Bamboo Shoots Sliced | 19 cal |
Brand popularity: BodyPal food database. Nutrition: manufacturer labels / USDA FoodData Central.
Bamboo shoot FAQs
How many calories are in bamboo shoots?
41 calories in a cup of raw sliced bamboo shoots (151 g), or 27 calories per 100 g. Boiled and drained, a cup drops to 14 calories, and a cup of drained canned slices is 25. The version you cooked decides the number.
How many calories are in canned bamboo shoots?
19 calories per 100 g of drained canned bamboo shoots, which is 25 calories in a cup of slices (131 g) and about 50 calories for a whole drained can (262 g). Retail labels range from 9 to 31 per 100 g because of label rounding at these small values.
How many calories in a cup of bamboo shoots?
41 calories for a cup of raw half-inch slices, which weighs 151 g. A cup of boiled drained slices weighs less at 120 g and is 14 calories. A cup of canned drained slices (131 g) is 25, and a cup stir-fried with oil reaches 64.
How many carbs are in bamboo shoots?
5.2 g of carbohydrate per 100 g raw, of which 2.2 g is fiber, leaving 3 g net. A cup holds 7.9 g of carbohydrate, 3.3 g of fiber and 4.6 g net — 3% of the 275 g Daily Value. Boiling drops carbohydrate to 1.92 g per 100 g.
How much protein is in bamboo shoots?
2.6 g of protein per 100 g raw, so 3.9 g in a cup of slices — 8% of the Daily Value from 41 calories. That is more protein per gram than bell pepper, kohlrabi or savoy cabbage. Canned shoots hold less, at 1.72 g per 100 g.
Are bamboo shoots healthy?
A cup of raw slices is 41 calories with 3.3 g of fiber (12% DV), 805 mg of potassium (17% DV) and 6 mg of sodium. Canned shoots keep the low calories but lose most of the potassium, dropping from 533 mg per 100 g to 80 mg.
Do bamboo shoots have to be cooked?
Fresh shoots are boiled and drained before eating, which is why the 27 calories per 100 g raw figure describes an ingredient rather than a finished dish. Cooked and drained, they measure 12 calories per 100 g. Canned shoots come cooked already and need only draining.
Do bamboo shoots have a lot of sodium?
4 mg per 100 g fresh and 7 mg canned and drained, so effectively none. Boiling them in salted water is what changes it: 240 mg per 100 g, or 288 mg in a cup, 13% of the 2,300 mg Daily Value. The salt comes from the pot, not the can.
Similar foods
- Bell Pepper — 31 cal per medium
- Bell Pepper — 24 cal green, 31 red
- Cabbage — 22 cal per cup chopped
- Salad — 23 cal per side salad
- Mushrooms — 15 cal per cup sliced
- Broccoli — 55 cal per cup chopped
Count it without the math
Point the camera at the bowl and BodyPal logs the cup of shoots, the oil they were cooked in and the sodium that came with them.
