Couscous: Calories, Nutrition & Healthier Swaps

Couscous is tiny pellets of semolina — essentially small pasta. It's ready in five minutes and nutritionally close to regular pasta.

Couscous nutrition facts per 100 g and per serving

Values per 100 g as eaten, averaged from food composition tables (USDA FoodData Central and others) and rounded — a specific brand or recipe will differ a little.

Couscous: nutrition highlights

It has 2.8 g of fiber per serving — roughly 11% of the 25 g a day most adults fall short of. There's almost no sugar: the carbohydrate is mostly starch.

On the open Nutri-Score algorithm, couscous gets an A: one of the better picks in its category. The score weighs calories, sugar, saturated fat and salt against protein, fiber and the share of fruit, vegetables, legumes and nuts.

What to watch

• It's low in fiber, so add vegetables, greens or beans to the plate.

How much movement is one serving?

One serving (plate, 200 g) is 224 kcal — roughly 73 min of easy walking or 28 min of cycling for a 70 kg (154 lb) person. In the diary, minutes are worked out for your weight and the activities you actually do.

Healthier swaps for Couscous

Swaps are picked the same way the app does it: from the same kind of food, with a serving matched to the same calories (±25%), and only when the swap is clearly better — not “salad instead of pizza”.

• Red lentils, boiled — 190 g, 224 kcal: +6.7 g fibre, +9.5 g protein.
• Lentils — 190 g, 220 kcal: +12 g fibre, +9.5 g protein.
• Kidney Beans — 190 g, 228 kcal: −0.6 g salt, +9.4 g fibre.
• White beans, boiled — 170 g, 230 kcal: −0.6 g salt, +7.9 g fibre.