How many calories are in a stuffed pepper?

A stuffed pepper runs 178 calories per 100 g, so the half-pepper serving USDA measures — 149 g, shell and filling together — is 265 calories. Finish both halves and the plate is 530. Chop the same dish into a measuring cup and one cup, at 198 g, comes to 352.

You'd need to walk about 53 minutes to burn the 265 calories in a half pepper with filling (149 g).

On this page

• Stuffed pepper quick facts
• US servings, from one ounce to a whole pepper
• Rice replaces the fat it is blamed for
• What going meatless actually saves
• Frozen trays are a different food
• Fat and sodium, not calories, are the numbers to watch
• How does a stuffed pepper compare?
• Most popular stuffed pepper brands
• FAQ

Stuffed pepper quick facts

Every figure below traces to FNDDS 2709073, "Stuffed pepper, with rice and meat", the USDA survey record for the dish as it reaches the table — pepper shell included, already cooked. USDA files three stuffed peppers, and they differ by recipe rather than by source: one with meat and no rice, one with rice and no meat, and this one, the ground-beef-and-rice version most American kitchens actually make.

The household measure USDA attaches to the record is "1/2 pepper with filling" at 149 g. That is the serving column.

% Daily Value is based on a 2,000-calorie diet.

Two rows a packaged label would carry are absent, and the reason is the source rather than the food: the 2021–2023 FNDDS release publishes no added sugars and no trans fat value for its mixed dishes, and none of the three stuffed pepper records is an exception. Lifting those figures off a frozen product's box would mean attaching one food's label to another food's data, so they are left out. Total sugars carry no Daily Value on a US label either, which is why that cell is empty.

Two more numbers come from the same record but sit outside the standard label. Cholesterol is 49 mg per 100 g, so 73 mg in half a pepper, roughly a quarter of the 300 mg Daily Value. Potassium is 174 mg per 100 g, or 259 mg in a serving, about 5% of the day.

Then read the percentage column properly. Half a pepper is 13% of a 2,000-calorie day, but 22% of its total fat and 26% of its saturated fat. The vegetable is not what moves those two rows.

US servings, from one ounce to a whole pepper

USDA lists two genuine household measures for this dish, and they are nowhere near the same size. Half a pepper with its filling weighs 149 g. One cup weighs 198 g — a third heavier, and 87 calories further down the day.

The gap is geometry rather than generosity. A stuffed pepper is a hollow shell wrapped around a dense core; the shell claims volume and weighs almost nothing. Cut the thing up and press it into a measuring cup and the shell collapses, so what fills the cup is mostly rice and beef. The measure that sounds smaller ends up outweighing the one that sounds bigger.

There is a third number in the USDA record that is worth ignoring on purpose. "Quantity not specified" appears at 99 g and 176 calories, close enough to a per-100 g reading to look like a serving. It is a filing convention for survey answers that never named a size. Log the half, log the cup, or log the whole pepper — not that.

The whole pepper is the case USDA does not measure and most people eat. Both halves come to 298 g and 530 calories, carrying 34.8 g of fat and 23.4 g of protein. It is a derived figure, simply the 149 g serving doubled, but it is the one that matches a plate where the pepper is dinner rather than a side. Raw against cooked never arises here: a stuffed pepper exists only cooked, and every USDA weight is for the finished dish.

Rice replaces the fat it is blamed for

The standard low-carb move is to leave the rice out. USDA prices that decision at 30 extra calories per half pepper.

FNDDS 2709072, "Stuffed pepper, with meat" runs 198 calories per 100 g, twenty above the version with rice in it. Carbohydrate does rise when rice goes in, from 4.23 g to 9.93 g per 100 g. Fat falls further than carbohydrate rises: 15.87 g down to 11.66 g.

The arithmetic settles it. The 4.21 g of fat that rice displaces is worth about 38 calories. The 5.7 g of carbohydrate it brings is worth about 23. Protein slips 1.37 g, another five or so. Net result: roughly 20 calories saved per 100 g, on a plate that got bigger rather than smaller.

Sodium moves the other way, which is the part nobody expects. The rice version carries 320 mg per 100 g against 288 mg for meat alone — seasoned rice is salted rice. So the honest summary is that rice buys you volume and costs you a little salt, and the calorie argument against it does not survive contact with the numbers.

What going meatless actually saves

FNDDS 2709074, "Stuffed pepper, with rice, meatless" is 166 calories per 100 g, so half a pepper is 247 against 265. That is 18 calories, under 7% of the serving.

Fat hardly notices the beef leaving: 11.28 g per 100 g against 11.66. Cheese and oil pick up the work. What genuinely changes is protein, down from 7.83 g per 100 g to 3.75 — 5.6 g in a serving instead of 11.7 — and cholesterol, from 49 mg per 100 g to 10.

The real saving is the one that never gets advertised. Sodium falls from 320 mg per 100 g to 186, so half a meatless pepper holds 277 mg instead of 477. That is 200 mg off a single serving, close to 9% of the 2,300 mg Daily Value. Skip the meat for the calories and you have saved eighteen of them while giving up half your protein. Skip it because you are watching sodium and the trade is a good one.

Frozen trays are a different food

Four US retail lines mark out the range: the Great Value Lean brown rice and quinoa tray at 49 calories per 100 g, Stouffer's stuffed peppers with tomato sauce at 84, a plain Great Value tray at 88, and Park Avenue's beef and tomato peppers at 123, which over a 227 g pepper works out to 279 calories.

Every retail product is lighter per 100 g than the 178 of the home version, and the spread is wide: across the seven clean US retail products in USDA's branded database the range runs from 49 to 175 calories per 100 g. More sauce, less ground beef, and in the lean lines quinoa and vegetables standing in for both.

Per package the picture changes. A 283 g tray at 88 calories per 100 g comes to 249 calories, near enough to one homemade half pepper. The lean brown rice and quinoa tray, at 49 per 100 g, is 139 for the entire box — a genuinely small dinner rather than a lighter version of a big one. The Stouffer's single pepper with sauce lands at 190 for its 226 g.

Sodium refuses to follow the calories down. The frozen trays sit at roughly 304 to 350 mg per 100 g, against 320 mg in the USDA home recipe. Fewer calories in the same weight, the same salt density, and a bigger package to get through. Read the sodium line on the box before filing the frozen version under careful.

Fat and sodium, not calories, are the numbers to watch

265 calories is an unremarkable number for a main dish. The two rows underneath it are not.

Half a pepper carries 17.4 g of fat, 22% of the 78 g in the FDA Daily Values, and 5.2 g of saturated fat, 26% of its 20 g. Eat the whole pepper and both double: 34.8 g of fat at 45% of the day, and 10.4 g of saturated fat at 52%. Federal advice keeps saturated fat below 10% of daily calories, a limit the Dietary Guidelines for Americans restate in every edition. One stuffed pepper takes you about halfway there on its own.

Sodium runs the same course. 477 mg in half a pepper is 21% of the day; a whole one is 954 mg, or 41%, before anything else on the plate is counted. That is the number to reach for if you want a single lever, and the meatless filling is the lever that moves it.

Fiber is the disappointment. 0.7 g per 100 g works out to 1.0 g in a serving, 4% of the Daily Value, which is very little for something that looks like a vegetable dish. A bell pepper is mostly water and white rice contributes nothing, so the fiber has nowhere to come from. It still counts toward the vegetable group, and the protein column earns its keep — 11.7 g in half a pepper, 23% of the Daily Value, 23.4 g if you eat both halves. As dinner it holds up. As a way of eating more fiber it does not.

How does a stuffed pepper compare?

All five are USDA survey records from the same vegetable-dish family — filled or baked vegetables that arrive as a main course — so the comparison is like for like. The stuffed pepper is the densest of them at 178 calories per 100 g, and it still lands in the middle per serving, because 149 g is the smallest portion on the list.

Our take: the spinach and cheese casserole is the best deal here, 14.1 g of protein for 260 calories, more protein per calorie than anything else in the table. The broccoli casserole is the lightest cup at 255, but 8.1 g of protein and 36.2 g of carbohydrate make it a side dish pretending to be dinner. Skip the stuffed artichoke if you are counting anything: 400 calories and 55.7 g of carbohydrate for one globe is the heaviest row twice over. The stuffed pepper's own claim is balance — the lowest carbohydrate figure of the five at 14.8 g, real protein, and a portion size that stops before the others do. Eat both halves and it becomes the heaviest dish on the list at 530, which is the whole argument for serving it as USDA measures it.

Most popular stuffed pepper 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.

Brand popularity: BodyPal food database. Nutrition: manufacturer labels / USDA FoodData Central.

Stuffed pepper FAQs

Similar foods

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• Gyro — 368 cal per sandwich
• Sloppy Joe — 342 cal per sandwich

Count it without the math

Point the camera at the plate and BodyPal works out whether that was half a pepper, a cup of it, or the whole thing.