• Question: Which food constituent is primarily responsible for the high energy content of cheese?

    Asked by xroisinx to Andrew, Dilip, Emma, John, Ruth on 15 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: John Gleeson

      John Gleeson answered on 15 Nov 2015:

      Well I think this is right up Emma’s neck of the woods. So kind of depends on the cheese you’re talking about. For example Cheddar cheese will have roughly 35% fat and 25% protein and like very little carbohydrates.

      The energy value for 1g of each is: Fat 9 calories, Carb and Protein 4 calories. So for 100g of cheese you’ll get 315 calories of energy from fat and 100 calories from protein.

      But different types of cheeses vary 🙂

    • Photo: Emma Feeney

      Emma Feeney answered on 16 Nov 2015:

      Absolutely John! Some (not all) cheeses are quite high energy, and this is mainly due to their high fat content, since as John shows, fat is the macronutrient that provides the most energy per gram. In fact it contains over twice the energy, weight per weight, than either protein or carbohydrate.

      What this means is that the greater the fat content of a food, the higher the energy content. While some cheeses, such as bries and cheddar, can have fat contents of 35% or more, some, such as ricotta cheese are less than 10%, and some cottage cheeses have below 3% fat. So, it varies very much from cheese to cheese, but the fat is the macronutrient that contributes most to energy content.

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