How many calories are in an orange?
A medium orange is about 60 kcal. That assumes roughly 130 g (4.5 oz) of peeled flesh — which is where the confusion starts, because a quarter to a third of the fruit in your hand is peel.
Per portion
| Portion | Calories | Protein | Carbs | Fat |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small orange, ~90 g flesh | ~42 kcal | 0.8 g | 11 g | 0.1 g |
| Medium orange, ~130 g flesh | ~60 kcal | 1.2 g | 15 g | 0.2 g |
| Large orange, ~185 g flesh | ~85 kcal | 1.7 g | 23 g | 0.2 g |
| 100 g (3.5 oz) flesh | ~47 kcal | 0.9 g | 12 g | 0.1 g |
| 1 cup segments, ~180 g | ~85 kcal | 1.7 g | 21 g | 0.2 g |
| Clementine, ~75 g | ~40 kcal | 0.7 g | 9 g | 0.1 g |
| 250 ml (8 fl oz) juice | ~115 kcal | 1.8 g | 26 g | 0.5 g |
A medium orange carries about 3 g of fibre, much of it in the pith and the membranes between segments.
What changes the number
Peel weight distorts the per-100-g figures. Put a 200 g orange on the scales, apply 47 kcal per 100 g and you get 94 kcal. The honest answer is nearer 68, because only about 145 g of it is edible. Weigh oranges peeled, or count them per fruit.
Size does the rest. Small to large is 42 to 85 kcal — double, for the same word on the shopping list.
Variety barely registers. Navel, Valencia and blood oranges all sit near 45–50 kcal per 100 g. Clementines are a little higher per 100 g but much smaller fruit, so one is 35–45 kcal.
Tins are the exception. Mandarin segments in juice are about 55 kcal per 100 g; in syrup, nearer 70 drained, plus whatever syrup you do not tip away.
Where it fits in a deficit
At 47 kcal per 100 g and 86% water, an orange is close to the cheapest fruit you can eat, and peeling it slows the whole business down — the mechanism behind high-volume eating. A cup of grapes is about 104 kcal against 60 for the orange, and has no such brake on it.
Protein is a rounding error at 1.2 g, so an orange fills a gap rather than a meal. Honest note: the vitamin C is not the interesting part. Half an orange covers a day’s worth, and none of it changes energy balance.
The orange versus the glass
This is the comparison that matters, because a glass of juice is not a serving of fruit with the pulp taken out — it is three or four oranges.
| Weight | Calories | Fibre | Time to finish | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Three medium oranges | ~390 g flesh | ~180 kcal | ~9 g | Several minutes |
| 250 ml juice | ~260 g | ~115 kcal | under 1 g | Twenty seconds |
The glass is fewer calories only because some of the fruit stayed in the juicer. Per mouthful it is far denser, and the fibre and the peeling — the two things that make an orange filling — are gone. “Not from concentrate” and “no added sugar” are usually true and tell you nothing about this: the sugar was in the oranges all along, worth remembering whenever you read a label on juice.
That does not make juice a bad food. It makes it poor value in a calorie deficit — an orange’s calories without an orange’s appetite suppression. Pineapple juice behaves the same way at about 130 kcal a glass.
Figures are typical values and vary by variety, size and preparation. General information, not medical advice.