Reading the jars lately, this intrigued me. I know that there is a chemical process that takes place when vegetables are pickled, but I don’t really understand why there are no longer any calories, ZERO. I thought maybe it was just cucumbers, but checking other vegetables, like cauliflower and carrots, the story is the same. Some brands list a tiny amount of vitamins, sometimes a trace amount of fibre, but still no calories. Why the big difference between fresh vegetables and pickled vegetables?
Some pickels do list calories. In fact mine say 5 calories per serving. The FDA allows you to round in determaining calories. That is why some diet soda has Zero per serving and some diet sodas have 1 calorie. It is a marketing thing.
So pickels do have some calories it is just they have so few they can be rounded down to zero.
I’m guessing that the easiest vegetables to pickle are ones with few calories to start with. Also how big is a ‘serving’ of pickles? A serving of vegetables is usually a quarter of a cup, but a serving of pickled vegetables may be smaller.
It will tell you on the nutritional information how big a serving is. For instance my 5 calorie pickles say One Spear = One Serving.
Pickles are made up of cucumbers, which are mostly water and cellulose. Water has no calories and cellulose is indigestible (no calories, either). The vinegar used in curing adds negligible calories.
Sweet pickles and bread and butter pickles have some calories due to the sugar used in processing, but dills usually have less than one, and thus can be promoted as having zero.