We are often asked how many calories are in momos, so we sat down last week with an online nutritional counter and worked out the calories, fat, carbs and protein for Lobsang’s Cheese and Spinach Momos recipe.
Serving size: One momo
- Calories 35.2
- Total Fat .8 g
- Saturated Fat .5 g
- Polyunsaturated Fat 0 g
- Monounsaturated Fat .2 g
- Cholesterol 1.9 mg
- Sodium 111.2. mg
- Potassium 27.5 mg
- Total Carbohydrate 5.2 g
- Dietary Fiber .4 g
- Sugars 4.6 g
- Protein 1.8 g
Serving size: 10 momos
- Calories 352
- Total Fat 8 g
- Saturated Fat 5 g
- Polyunsaturated Fat 0 g
- Monounsaturated Fat 2 g
- Cholesterol 19 mg
- Sodium 1112 mg
- Potassium 275 mg
- Total Carbohydrate 52 g
- Dietary Fiber 4 g
- Sugars 46 g
- Protein 18 g
The overall calorie count is not too bad – 35 calories per momo – as long as you don’t go wild with your quantities, and if you don’t have any heavy side dishes in the meal. Usually we just have a salad or brussels sprouts with our momos.
But the truth is that we regularly eat about 10 momos at a sitting. You get full quite a while before that, but there’re just so dang good that it’s hard to stop. Some people eat a lot more than that. It isn’t unheard of to eat 20 or more, and of course some perhaps more civilized or restrained people eat less 😉 But for us, a standard serving is about 10 momos.
Also, you need to take into account any pickles or hot sauce (sepen) or soy sauce you eat with your momos, and this had some surprising and disturbing values. The carbs and fat are okay for the amount of dipping sauce you would have for a meal of momos, but we were shocked to see that the sodium count was sky high! There’s the same amount of sodium in just a bit of dipping sauce as for 10 momos! We may have to rethink the Patak’s and soy sauce, though we love them so much!! Or only eat the hot sauce we make ourselves, which will be MUCH lower in sodium.
Serving Size: 1 tablespoon each of Patak’s
Lime Pickle and Kikkoman’s Lite Soy Sauce
- Calories 45
- Total Fat 3 g
- Saturated Fat 0 g
- Polyunsaturated Fat 0 g
- Monounsaturated Fat 0 g
- Cholesterol 0 mg
- Sodium 1135 mg
- Potassium 0 mg
- Total Carbohydrate 3 g
- Dietary Fiber 1 g
- Sugars 0 g
- Protein 1 g
And if you’re interested in experiencing the real thing in Lhasa, you can learn how to travel to Tibet here.
Tibetan Home Cooking
Bring joy to the people you love by making your own delicious, authentic Tibetan meals
Shaneise says
Based on your calculations, the momo’s seem perfectly healthy. not too bad at all. unless obviously you binge on like 20. apart from that they’re really not that bad!
Shivani Sharma says
Came here to check the calories; thanks to the picture, now I have a craving for spinach and cheese momos!
B. Hussain says
Oh God! I can’t live without having momo and your calorie count is shuddering. I have a belly and I am running on treadmill to burn calories but never thought momo is bringing it back. What should I do now?
yowangdu says
It’s terrible, isn’t it? If you stick with the steamed veggie momos and don’t eat too many and don’t put a lot of achar, you can still have the beloved momos! 🙂
Concerned Cyclist says
Might be a silly question, but is there any downside to eating momos every day? Or any health issues that could come out of it that I should be worried about?
I personally do not have much knowledge about this but my significant others says that eating too many momos frequently can mess up my health. Is that true?
Off late, I’ve been eating about 10, every evening after some exercise. I know, doesn’t help me 🙁 But man! Do I love getting myself some momos?
Harriet Rowland says
Just a thought, as people often visually get this the wrong way around; lite soy sauce has more sodium…or at least is saltier…than the dark soy sauces. I am not sure, but if you look on the bottles of dark soy next time you shop, you find it slightly less horrifying!! I love the Pataks hot lime too, but seetwr ones like Sharwoods mango or even Chinese sweet chilli sauce mY be a lower sodium alternative……I cannot guarantee this of course, but it just occurred to me….a sauce makeover!! Hat x
yowangdu says
Thanks, Hat! The lite soy sauce we buy from Kikkoman is lower sodium than the normal one (40% so they say). Sounds like in general ones that are lighter in color are actually saltier. Is that what you mean? We were very sad to learn how much salt and calories the Patak’s had — yikes!!!!