The churro is a dessert that is made by spreading a soft dough inside a funnel and pouring it into hot oil to form a kind of cake covered with powdered sugar. High in fat and carbohydrates, churros are also high in calories.
Calories
A single churro about 6 inches in diameter (15.24 cm) and topped with a teaspoon of icing sugar contains 285 calories, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). One hundred twenty-eight of those calories are carbohydrates, another 128 are fat, and 29 are protein.
Components
A churro weighs approximately 92 g, according to the USDA. Approximately 29g are carbohydrates, with 4g of sugar in that amount. Fats make up a little more than 14 g, of which 3 g are saturated fat; proteins weigh about 7 g. The rest is water and other nutrients.
Nutrients
One serving of churros provides several essential vitamins, including vitamins A, D, E, and K, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, and folic acid. In addition, it contains minerals such as calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, selenium, zinc and potassium.
Considerations
The high fat content of certain foods can contribute to obesity and heart disease, according to the American Heart Association. The churro is relatively high in fat and should be eaten in moderation.
What is its nutritional composition?
The churros provide us with 361 kcal per 100 grams , always according to the FEN. Taking into account that each serving is about 90 grams, and we can take between one and two, these will be about 650 kcal, which does not define the product as particularly light. On the other hand, they provide 36 carbohydrates per serving, which can become 72 grams for an average breakfast, not counting the fact that they are sprinkled with sugar .
They barely provide four grams of protein and 18 grams of lipids, although mostly mono- and polyunsaturated , always depending on the type of oil used, which should preferably be olive oil. But perhaps the most critical point of churros is perhaps that they barely provide a gram of fiber per serving, which causes the glycemic index to skyrocket when eating a churro, since they are mostly carbohydrates, that is, starch, which in contact with saliva it is partially converted to glucose. Again this without adding the sprinkled sugar.
That is to say that the churros, healthy as breakfast or snack are not ; Nutritionists recommend that cereals be consumed but in their integral aspect, that is, with dietary fiber. In this case – there are recipes for whole meal churros – yes, we could talk about a healthy breakfast or snack product, as long as it is consumed in moderation.
Is a Croissant Healthier?
Another thing is that we compare churros with croissants, breakfast cereals or cookies, for example. Here the churro wins nutritionally because the croissant contains a higher proportion of carbohydrates : 40 grams of the churro compared to 52 for the croissant, 69 for the cookie and 85 for some breakfast cereals. In addition, in the case of the churro, we can remove the surface sugar layer, but not in the other three, which have them added.
Finally, note that while the churro only contains the fats of olive oil, in the others saturated fats of animal origin -butter- or ultra-processed vegetable fats such as processed palm oil or the stearic fraction of high sunflower oil are usually used. in oleic, which we have discussed in the article High-oleic sunflower oil in food: a new consumer fraud? .
None of these fats is healthy compared to olive and sunflower frying oil, as long as the healthy frying methods established by law have been used, as we explain in our article How many times can I fry with the same oil?
So comparatively, without being a strictly healthy option , churros are clearly healthier than a croissant , as well as being a traditionally Spanish product. Ideally, fruit should be added to Maria Eugenia’s ministerial breakfasts in addition to the churros so that both things could be combined and achieve a nutritionally balanced breakfast, but in general terms the person in charge was right .
